FORD  HALL  NOON  LECTURES 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 


THE 

LABOR  MOVEMENT 

FROM  THE  STANDPOINT  OF 
RELIGIOUS  VALUES 


BY 
HARRY  F.  WARD 

Professor  of  Social  Service,  Boston  University  School  of  Theology 
Secretary,  The  Methodist  Federation  for  Social  Service 


The  verbatim  stenographic  report  of  a  series  of 
noon  day  lectures 

delivered  at 

Ford  Hall,  Boston,  1915, 

together  with  the  questions  and  answers  of  the 
Forum  period  following  each  lecture 


•flew 

STURGIS  &  WALTON 

COMPANY 

1917 


COPYRIGHT,    1917, 

BY  STURGIS  &  WALTON  COMPANY 
Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  May,   191T. 


VAIL-BALLOU    COMPANY 
BINQHAMTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


PREFACE 

A  School  of  Theology  and  the  I.  W.  W.  sitting 
together  to  discuss  the  labour  problem!  Can 
any  conference  more  strange  to  our  modern 
thinking  be  imagined!  But  could  any  confer- 
ence more  essentially  logical  be  conceived !  The 
bringing  together,  however,  of  these  various 
groups  into  one  harmonious  student  body  was 
the  function  of  a  third  idea  in  action,  the  Ford 
Hall  Open  Forum. 

Ford  Hall  stands  for  free  discussion  of  ques- 
tions carrying  a  distinctive  ethical  message.  It  is 
in  a  large  way  a  church  for  community  religion. 
Within  its  walls  every  religious,  racial  and 
political  element  in  the  community  have  come 
together  seeking  for  a  faith  common  to  all. 
Therefore,  when  the  Boston  University  School  of 
Theology  sought  for  a  place  fit  and  proper  for  the 
exercise  of  the  hospitality  it  contemplated,  the 
platform  of  Ford  Hall  with  its  associations  of  the 
Open  Forum  was  the  natural  place  to  seek. 

The  lectures  here  reproduced  were  originally 
presented  by  Dr.  Ward  to  his  students  in  the 
University.  They  attracted  so  much  attention 
that  a  group  of  ministers  asked  to  have  them 

V 

380525 


vi  PREFACE 

repeated.  Thereupon  the  School  of  Theology 
issued  a  general  invitation  to  all  to  attend  the 
course.  It  stated  the  aim  of  the  course  to  be  to 
present  the  broad,  essential  facts  concerning  the 
constituent  groups  of  the  labour  movement  in 
the  United  States,  and  discuss  its  main  demands 
from  the  standpoint  of  religious  values. 

The  Boston  Baptist  Social  Union  gladly  opened 
Ford  Hall  to  the  meetings,  and  men  of  all  classes 
and  creeds,  of  all  ranks,  standards  and  opinions, 
gathered  to  listen  to  an  official  representative  of 
a  School  of  Theology  expound  the  labour  move- 
ment. Ministers  and  laymen,  employers  and 
employees  sat  together  and  asked  questions  at 
the  close  of  the  addresses.  The  lectures  met 
with  a  warm  reception.  The  resolutions  pre- 
sented by  the  I.  W.  W.  at  their  close  may  be  taken 
as  fairly  illustrative  of  the  feeling  of  the  think- 
ing public  toward  the  addresses.  It  is  in  re- 
sponse to  a  very  general  request  for  their  publi- 
cation that  this  volume  is  presented  to  the  public. 
The  text  is  from  a  verbatim  stenographic  report, 
with  no  changes  whatever. 

I  was  privileged  to  preside  at  these  lectures 
and  to  conduct  the  question  period.  I  feel  that 
this  task  was  indeed  an  honour,  and  I  regard  it 
as  an  equal  privilege  as  editor  to  present  this 
volume  to  the  larger  public. 

WILLIAM  HOETON  FOSTER. 


INTRODUCTION 

Can  an  interpreter  of  modern  industry  come 
out  of  a  theological  seminary?  An  intelligent 
twentieth  century  citizen  would  no  more  expect 
it  than  did  the  average  man  of  Jesus'  time  sup- 
pose that  any  good  thing  could  come  out  of  Naz- 
areth. But  I  ought  to  have  taken  it  for  granted 
after  my  long  acquaintance  with  such  seminary 
professors  as  Eauschenbusch,  Fagnani,  Mathews, 
Hall,  Vedder,  Eyan  and  Eowe.  Still  I  was 
amazed  when  I  witnessed  the  work  of  Prof. 
Harry  Ward  in  this  remarkable  course  of  lec- 
tures. His  range  of  knowledge,  breadth  of 
vision,  depth  of  sympathy,  unruffled  equanimity, 
splendid  poise,  and  remarkable  powers  of  ready 
and  accurate  speech  simply  overwhelm  me. 
That  I  myself  was  not  bewitched  nor  hypnotised 
was  attested  by  the  extraordinary  response  of 
the  entire  audience  that  filled  Ford  Hall,  day 
after  day.  It  was  a  conglomerate  crowd  of  min- 
isters, business  and  professional  men,  Socialists, 
Labor  Unionists  and  I.  W.  W.'s  that  made  up 
that  audience.  They  all  seemed  to  feel  very 
much  as  I  did,  and  yet  the  labour  problem  was 

vii 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

handled  from  A  to  Z  without  hesitation,  no  side- 
stepping and  unequivocally. 

And  this  extraordinarily  unique  situation  was 
intensified  by  the  fact  that  the  lecturer  was  not 
essaying  an  adventure  on  his  own  hook  and  at 
his  own  risk,  but  was  speaking  as  the  representa- 
tive of  the  Theological  School  of  Boston  Univer- 
sity in  a  hall  freely  given  for  the  purpose  by  a 
great  lay  organisation,  the  Boston  Baptist  Social 
Union.  And,  to  cap  the  climax,  the  National  In- 
dustrial Union  of  Textile  Workers  of  the  I.  W. 
W.  fraternity  drafted  resolutions  expressing 
their  appreciation  of  the  whole  enterprise  and 
especially  of  Professor  Ward.  I  doubt  if  the 
like  of  this  has  ever  been  known  before.  And  re- 
member that  the  audience  had  the  right  to  ask 
questions  after  each  address  and  no  vague,  un- 
certain or  unsatisfactory  statement  could  pass 
unchallenged. 

No  small  measure  of  the  success  of  this  im- 
mensely significant  enterprise  was  due  to  Mr. 
William  Horton  Foster,  who  not  only  presided 
throughout  with  great  skill,  but  who  also  had 
much  to  do  with  initiating  and  carrying  forward 
the  whole  idea.  In  fact,  it  was  an  outgrowth,  in 
some  ways,  of  his  work  as  Secretary  of  the  Ford 
Hall  Foundation,  an  organisation  given  up  to 
promoting  the  Open  Forum  Movement, 

GEORGE  W.  COLEMAN. 


Feb.  25,  1915. 

In  behalf  of  the  I.  W.  W.  Propaganda  League  of 
Boston  we  wish  to  express  our  sincere  thanks  to  the 
Baptist  Social  Union,  also  to  the  Boston  University 
School  of  Theology  and  particularly  to  Prof.  Ward  for 
making  it  possible  to  present  to  the  people  of  Boston 
the  most  vital  social  problem  of  the  day,  namely,  the 
Labor  Movement. 

We  wish  to  compliment  Prof.  Ward  for  the  unbi- 
ased, unprejudiced,  and  able  manner  in  which  he  pre- 
sented the  controversy  between  capital  and  labor  and 
its  causes. 

The  viewpoint  taken  by  Prof.  Ward  coupled  with 
his  remarkable  exposition  of  the  case  of  labor,  we  feel 
will  meet  with  the  general  approval  of  the  organiza- 
tion and  its  members. 

It  has  ever  been  the  policy  of  the  I.  W.  W.  and  its 
members  to  regard  the  conflict  between  the  classes  in 
society  from  the  viewpoint  of  the  worker,  and  we  be- 
lieve that  Prof.  Ward  in  his  course  of  lectures  on  the 
labor  movement  has  presented  labor's  Cause  in  such  a 
clear  and  analytical  manner,  that  one  would  be  led  to 
believe  that  he  had  acquired  his  extensive  knowledge 
of  the  Labor  Movement  from  actual  experience  in 
Industry. 

We  sincerely  hope  that  the  course  of  lectures  just 
completed  will  be  published  and  given  as  wide  a  cir- 
culation as  possible. 

Committee : 


Signed  J 


;ADOLPH  LESSIG, 
NATHAN  HERMAN, 
GUY  CURTIS, 
JOHN  J.  FRASER. 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 


I.     TRADE  UNIONS 

THE  labour  movement  is  one  of  the  great  social 
forces  that  are  making  the  modern  world.  It  is 
the  effort  of  the  wage  earners  to  secure  their  full 
share  in  the  gains  of  our  industrial  civilisation; 
to  secure  also  their  full  share  in  the  control  of 
that  civilisation.  In  its  present  form  it  has  / 
three  groupings,  the  trade  unions,  the  socialists, 
and  the  syndicalists,  f  In  this  country  the  pre- 
dominant labour  organisation  is  the  trade 
union  —  which  groups  the  workers  according  to 
the  craft  which  they  follow,  around  the  tools  that 
they  use.  These  trade  unions  are  centralised  in 
the  American  Federation  of  Labor  which  has  ex- 
isted about  thirty -three  years  and  comprises  now 
about  two  million  members,  with  about  half  a 
million  other  organised  workers  who  are  not 
affiliated,  the  principal  element  in  that  group  be- 
ing the  Railroad  Brotherhoods. 

The  actual  strength  of  the  trade  union  move- 
ment is  much  greater  than  its  numbered  mem- 
bership, because  a  large  proportion  of  the  indus- 

s 


4  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

trial  workers  who  are  not  in  its  membership  still 
follow  its  lead.  That  means  that  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor  has  in  it  about  18  per  cent, 
of  those  available  for  membership,  because  it 
operates  in  only  two  of  the  broad  divisions  of  the 
gainfully  employed  in  this  country.  We  have 
something  over  twenty-nine  million  gainfully 
employed  in  this  country,  in  five  groups.  In 
those  two  groups  where  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor  operates  we  have  a  little  over  twelve 
million  people.  Now  that  membership  is  gath- 
ered by  means  of  organisers  who  endeavour  to 
persuade  first  the  workers  to  join  the  unions. 
Where  the  trades  are  organised  under  the  union 
label  they  endeavour  to  get  the  employers  to 
adopt  the  unions,  and  to  persuade  the  workers  to 
use  union  made  goods.  Of  course  the  latter 
method  is  confined  to  certain  trades  or  goods 
which  are  consumed  by  industrial  wage  earners. 
That  membership  is  gathered  without  distinc- 
tion of  sex,  creed  or  colour,  although  there  is 
about  the  same  discrimination  against  women 
that  there  is  in  the  world  at  large.  It  reflects 
pretty  accurately  the  general  social  situation. 
For  example,  the  Ladies'  Garment  Workers' 
Union,  which  is  the  largest  women's  union,  is  of- 
ficered practically  entirely  by  men.  There  has 
been  a  great  increase  in  the  last  five  years  in  the 
organisation  of  women,  due  largely  to  the  activ- 


TRADE  UNIONS  5 

ity  of  the  Women's  Trade  Union  League,  and  of 
course  a  changing  sentiment  within  labour 
circles  concerning  the  activity  of  women  in 
labour  affairs. 

The  government  of  the  trade  union  is  a  differ- 
entiated matter.  You  have  your  central  Amer- 
ican Federation  of  Labor  with  its  national  offices, 
sustained  by  a  per  capita  tax.  You  have  your 
city  and  state  federations.  These  deal  with  mat- 
ters of  general  interest  and  general  policy.  The 
real  governmental  power  is  in  the  national  and 
international  unions,  one  hundred  and  eleven  of 
them,  which  compose  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor.  They  really  govern  the  labour  world. 
They  have  in  them  some  twenty  thousand  local 
labour  unions.  In  addition  there  are  some  six 
hundred  and  forty  which  have  a  charter  directly 
from  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  either 
because  there  is  no  international  union  in  that 
trade  or  because  the  local  workers  are  not  nu- 
merous enough  to  be  organised  according  to 
trades. 

The  American  Federation  of  Labor  cannot 
technically  be  held  responsible  for  the  acts  of  the 
international  unions.  There  is  a  certain  degree 
of  moral  responsibility,  but  it  would  be  almost 
as  unfair  to  hold  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  responsible  for  the  McNamara  crimes  as 
it  would  be  to  hold  the  United  States  responsible 


6  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

for  the  recent  lynchings  in  Georgia.  The  local 
unions  have  very  little  democratic  power;  for 
power  is  centralised,  to  an  extraordinary  degree 
almost,  in  the  international  unions.  They  have 
the  power  of  excommunication  (and  they  do  ex- 
communicate) and  the  punishment  is,  of  course, 
that  the  places  of  strikers  can  be  filled  if  need  be 
by  the  international  union  itself,  and  there  is 
really  where  its  power  of  control  lies  and  is 
centred. 

In  so  far  as  the  general  policy  of  trade  unions 
is  concerned, —  their  relation  to  public  welfare, — 
whatever  may  be  the  defects  in  this  country  the 
social  gains  that  have  come  to  us  from  them  are 
Considerable.  They  have  stood  first  of  all  for 
the  protection  of  the  workers,  the  protection  of 
their  lives,  of  their  moral  and  intellectual  wel- 
fare. They  have  been  a  school  of  democracy. 
Their  influence  over  the  immigrant  group  in 
training  them  for  American  life  can  scarcely  be 
over-estimated.  They  promote  the  self-expres- 
sion of  labour  as  opposed  on  the  one  hand  to  phil- 
anthropy and  on  the  other  hand  to  legislation. 
They  democratically  develop  workers  themselves 
to  pursue  the  path  of  their  own  development. 

COLLECTIVE  BARGAINING 

Consider   some   of   the   outstanding   policies 
which   have   generally   prevailed.    The   funda- 


TRADE  UNIONS  7 

mental  policy  is  collective  bargaining.  The 
basic  contention  of  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  is  that  there  must  be  and  is  a  partnership 
between  capital  and  labour,  that  their  mutual 
dependence  one  upon  another  creates  a  joint 
moral  obligation,  that  they  must  work  together 
and  that  their  partnership  must  be  realised 
through  collective  bargaining,  through  the  power 
of  labour  to  sell  its  labour  and  to  agree  to  the 
terms  under  which  it  shall  work  in  joint  capacity 
through  its  chosen  representatives.  There  is  an 
economic  necessity  here.  Under  the  concen- 
trated conditions  of  modern  industry,  labour  of 
course  develops  side  by  side  a  similar  concentra- 
tion and  the  two  groups  (if  business  is  to  be  done 
according  to  the  basis  of  to-day,  economically 
speaking)  must  work  together.  There  must  be 
joint  action  on  the  part  of  these  two  groups.  To 
attempt  to  enforce  the  right  of  capital  to  deal 
to-day  with  the  individual  labourer  is  just  about 
as  reasonable  as  to  ask  labour  (or  for  labour  to 
assert  the  right  or  the  demand)  to  deal  with  indi- 
vidual stockholders  of  an  enterprise.  Of  course 
we  have  been  recently  told  on  the  stand  in  this 
country  by  the  men  responsible  for  some  of  the 
largest  industries  that  the  individual  stockhold- 
ers had  no  responsibility  whatever  for  labour 
conditions.  v 

There  is  not  only  an  economic  necessity  but  an  x 


8  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

ethical  necessity  here.  Labour  is  not  free  to-day 
unless  it  can  bargain  jointly.  That  is  perfectly 
obvious.  It  is  under  the  compulsion  of  hunger 
and  of  necessity.  It  does  not  own  its  tools;  it 
does  not  own  its  resources;  it  does  not  own  the 
things  necessary  for  its  work  in  the  large  and 
highly  organised  industries  to-day,  and  ethically 
labour  is  neither  free  nor  in  the  attitude  or  con- 
dition of  justice  unless  it  has  the  right  to  bargain 
collectively  and  jointly.  Now  that  is  generally 
conceded.  I  suppose  it  has  more  opposition  in 
these  United  States  than  in  any  other  civilised 
country,  and  that  is  one  of  the  anomalies  of  our 
situation,  that  a  country  which  has  developed  the 
representative  principle  in  government  is  yet  un- 
der the  influence  of  a  belated  individualism  and 
largely  attempts  to  deny  that  principle  in  indus- 
try. And  yet  the  days  are  changing.  The 
principle  of  collective  bargaining  will  largely  be 
admitted  to-day  (perhaps  by  the  majority),  al- 
though some  folks  are  still  living  in  the 
eighteenth  century  and  others  still  live  in  Col- 
orado. But  generally  that  principle  is  con- 
ceded. 

It  was  a  remarkable  exhibition  on  the  stand  be- 
fore the  Industrial  Commission  to  see  the  men 
who  have  the  largest  financial  interests  in  this 
country  one  after  another  admitting  this  princi- 
ple, and  then  one  after  the  other  testifying  that 


TRADE  UNIONS  9 

there  had  been  no  attempt  in  the  industries 
which  they  control  to  work  out  the  principle  and 
to  apply  it.  Now  if  you  admit  the  right  of 
labour  to  bargain  collectively  and  then  refuse  to 
have  any  dealings  whatsoever  with  the  collective 
organisation  of  labour  you  are  giving  labour  a 
loaf  of  bread  which  turns  out  to  be  made  of  stone. 
Of  course  the  collective  bargaining  may  turn  out 
to  be  autocracy  on  the  one  side.  There  has  al- 
ways been  the  possibility  of  oligarchy  when  you 
have  attempted  to  organise  a  republic  but  that 
has  never  held  our  hand  from  attempting  to 
carry  through  further  democratic  organisation. 
Men  have  to  facs  danger  and  perils  a^  the  price 
or  risk  of  progress.  But  in  this  day  and  age  to 
refuse  to  enter  into  any  collective  bargaining 
with  labour,  to  admit  the  principle  but  decline  to 
wrork  out  the  form  of  it,  is  simply  to  leave  the 
whole  industrial  world  in  chaos,  and  to  drive  it 
into  a  condition  of  anarchy,  of  guerilla  warfare, 
which  is  absolutely  unsupportable  in  our  modern 
civilisation. 

THE  CLOSED  SHOP 

Then  comes  the  policy  of  the  closed  shop  and 
those  who  object  to  collective  bargaining  object 
to  it  because  it  leads  to  the  closed  shop.  Now 
there  are  different  kinds  of  a  closed  shop. 
One  is  the  shop  that  is  closed  to  organised 


10  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

labour,  and  that  passes  before  the  unsuspecting 
public  under  the  guise  of  an  open  shop.  It  is 
largely  promoted  by  a  group  of  men  in  this 
country  who  are  interested  in  maintaining  a 
shop  that  is  absolutely  closed  against  organised 
labour.  There  may  be  such  a  thing  as  an  "  open 
shop"  but  as  an  experienced  economist  and  in- 
dustrial observer  said  to  me  not  long  ago,  "  I  am 
still  looking  for  one."  They  do  occur,  of  course, 
here  and  there,  non-union  and  union  men  work- 
ing side  by  side.  The  tendency  is,  however,  to 
work  one  way  or  the  other,  to  become  either  a 
non-union  shop  or  a  union  shop. 

Now  the  terms  non-union  and  closed  shop  are 
not  necessarily  identical.  There  are  two  kinds 
of  closed  shop,  one  is  the  shop  where  whoever 
comes  in  is  required  to  join  a  union,  and  the 
other  where  no  man  is  taken  unless  he  is  a  union 
man.  For  all  practical  purposes  they  are  identi- 
cal and  may  be  so  considered.  The  fundamental 
thing  about  the  closed  shop  in  judging  it  is  that 
it  is  a  war  measure.  It  is  not  a  policy  of  organ- 
ised labour  nearly  as  much  in  Europe  as  in  this 
country.  It  is  not  written  in  trade  agreement 
contracts  in  England  as  in  this  country.  What 
is  the  reason?  It  is  in  the  different  attitude  of 
the  employer  and  the  courts  in  England. 
Labour  has  been  driven  in  this  country  by  the 
opposition  of  employers,  by  industrial  militarism 


TRADE  UNIONS  11 

and  by  the  ancient  attitude  of  courts  to  insist 
more  upon  the  closed  shop  than  it  does  in  Eng- 
land, and  the  recent  decision  of  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court  making  constitutional  laws  by 
which  the  employer  may  discharge  men  for  be- 
longing to  a  union  will  have  a  tendency  to  ac- 
centuate'both  the  fighting  spirit  and  the  fighting 
method.  We  shall  hear  more  of  the  closed  shop 
because  of  that  decision. 

The  closed  shop  must  be  judged  on  two 
grounds,  on^  economic  and  the  other  ethical. 
Does  it  lead  to  economic  efficiency?  You  will 
have  many  manufacturers  fight  it  on  the  grounds 
of  inefficiency,  asserting  that  it  is  absolutely 
inefficient  from  the  standpoint  of  production. 
]STow  in  the  long  run  this  issue  will  be  settled  in 
the  field  of  efficiency  but  it  will  not  be  settled 
simply  in  the  field  of  efficiency  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  employer  alone,  not  efficiency  in  pro- 
duction alone;  it  will  be  efficiency  from  the 
standpoint  of  social  welfare,  whether  the  total 
human  results  are  more  or  less  under  that  sys- 
tem than  under  any  other. 

When  you  come  to  the  ethical  ground,  it  is 
the  question  of  the  degree  of  compulsion  which 
is  exercised  to  secure  the  closed  shop.  We  feel 
instinctively  and  naturally,  we  Americans,  that 
a  man  has  the  right  to  control  his  labour  as  he 
pleases.  We  do  not  always  see  the  anarchical 


12  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

implication  of  that  right.  We  do  not  always  see 
how  we  have  had  to  limit  that  right  in  govern- 
ment and  how  it  will  increasingly  have  to  be  lim- 
ited in  industry.  But  you  must  remember  if  you 
are  going  to  argue  that  an  individual  man  has 
the  right  to  sell  his  labour  on  his  own  terms,  to 
work  for  whom  he  pleases  and  as  he  pleases, 
then  by  the  same  token  other  men  have  the  right 
to  decline  to  work  with  him,  and  if  they  exer- 
cise that  right  that  simply  means  the  right  of 
a  certain  kind  of  closed  shop.  On  the  other 
side  you  have  compulsion  exercised  because  the 
man  who  declines  to  accept  union  standards  is 
lowering  the  standards  of  living  for  the  whole 
group  and  you  have  compulsion  working  on  both 
sides.  When  that  compulsion  becomes  actually 
coercion  you  have  an  entirely  different  situation, 
and  while  on  pure  grounds  of  social  welfare  it 
will  be  and  may  be  increasingly  necessary  to  ex- 
ercise coercion  (we  are  doing  it  all  the  time 
through  our  labour  legislation),  the  principles  of 
ethics  and  sound  government  insist  that  this  right 
is  a  right  which  belongs  to  the  community  as  a 
whole,  /-ft  belongs  to  the  majority  and  it  does 
not  belong  to  any  single  group  in  the  community. 
The  closed  shop  without  the  element  of  coercion, 
brought  about  by  moral  suasion  which  has  no 
coercion  in  it,  may  be  of  the  highest  ethical  value 
to  the  whole  community. 


TRADE  UNIONS  13 

Then  there  is  the  preferential  shop,  where  the 
right  of  any  man  to  work  is  recognised  but  where 
the  preference  is  given  to  the  union  man  as 
long  as  his  character  and  efficiency  is  of  equal 
grade  with  the  other  man  (on  the  ground  that 
the  union  is  bearing  the  burden,  is  paying  the 
bills  for  improving  labour  conditions)  where  he 
is  given  a  preference  in  employment  and  where, 
when  it  comes  to  discharge,  he  is  given  a  prefer- 
ence and  retained.  In  other  words  the  right  of 
any  individual  to  seek  employment  is  recognised, 
but  if  he  is  a  non-union  man  he  can  only  get 
the  first  preference  by  showing  himself  to  have 
better  efficiency  and  better  character  than  the 
union  man.  Usually  you  get  out  of  the  prefer- 
ential shop  the  union  shop  because  all  the  peo- 
ple who  are  there  are  union  people.  It  naturally 
works  out  in  that  way.  It  has  come  about  by 
a  perfectly  natural,  ethical  process  because  the 
union  has  been  raising  its  standards  and  furnish- 
ing the  best  possible  workmen.  You  have  what 
is  practically  a  closed  shop  without  any  of  the 
coercion  measures. 

INDUSTRIAL  DISPUTES 

What  about  industrial  disputes?  The  aver- 
age picture  that  has  until  recently  prevailed  of 
the  agent  of  the  union  (he  used  to  be  the  walk- 
ing delegate),  the  business  agent,  is  that  he  was 


14  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

a  nuisance  in  the  community  who  stirred  up 
trouble,  an  undesirable  citizen  because  it  was  his 
chief  task  to  foment  strikes.  That  is  a  popular 
picture  that  has  prevailed  of  the  union  organizer 
until  quite  recently.  Now  what  are  the  facts? 
The  facts  are  to-day  that  the  chief  business  of  the 
successful  business  agent  of  the  union  is  to  pre- 
vent strikes  instead  of  to  promote  them,  because 
labour  has  learned  all  too  bitterly  the  cost  of  war 
methods,  and  the  strike,  of  course,  is  a  war 
method  that  belongs  to  the  Stone  Age.  "  To-day 
organised  labour  is  much  more  interested  in  pre- 
venting strikes  than  it  is  in  calling  them.  For 
example,  in  1913  organised  labour  in  this  coun- 
try settled  over  three  thousand  disputes  without 
strikes,  secured  improved  conditions  in  over 
three  thousand  cases  without  strikes.  Organ- 
ised labour  called  in  that  year  less  than  one 
thousand  strikes,  and  of  all  the  strikes  in  this 
country  in  that  year  organised  labor  had  to  do 
with  between  fifty-five  and  seventy  per  cent.  Or- 
ganised labour  is  not  to  be  held  entirely  respon- 
sible for  all  the  strikes.  Carroll  D.  Wright  has 
,^aid  that  75  per  cent,  were  occasioned  because  of 
the  refusal  of  employers  to  arbitrate.  In  every 
country  in  the  world  except  England,  and 
possibly  Australia  and  New  Zealand,  in  the  last 
five  years  there  has  been  an  increase  of  labour 
difficulties,  of  industrial  disputes,  an  increase 


TRADE  UNIONS  15 

in  strikes.  This  condition  has  not  obtained  in 
England  because  of  the  fact  to  which  I  referred 
some  time  ago,  because  the  principle  of  collective 
bargaining  and  the  rights  of  organised  labour  are 
recognised  more  by  English  employers  and  Eng- 
lish courts,  because  organised  labour  is  stronger 
there,  because  it  has  secured  a  greater  oppor- 
tunity of  political  expression,  and  where  it  is 
stronger  you  have  fewer  strikes.  Also  we  have 
had  a  tendency  to  increasingly  bitter  and  violent 
strikes  in  this  country  in  the  last  few  years,  but 
it  is  interesting  to  note  that  they  occurred  in  in- 
dustries that  are  not  organised.  Some  of  the  bit- 
terest outbreaks  in  recent  years  in  this  country 
have  been  because  the  conditions  were  unbear- 
able. That  was  true  in  Lawrence.  Now  by  the 
same  token  conditions  that  have  obtained  in  some 
of  the  mining  centres  in  this  country  have  led  to 
action  on  the  part  of  the  local  workers  against 
the  desires  and  wishes  and  policy  of  the  national 
organisation,  an  action  that  was  detrimental 
because  it  was  badly  planned  and  came  at  the 
wrong  time.  Conditions  had  become  unbearable 
and  drove  the  workers  to  action. 

INDUSTRIAL  DISPUTES 

How  are  they  going  to  settle  disputes?  By  ar- 
bitration and  conciliation?  We  have  organised 
a  number  of  state  boards  of  arbitration  which 


16  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

are  of  very  little  use.  They  furnish  an  orna- 
mental decoration  on  the  statute  book,  an  orna- 
mental (or  otherwise)  office  for  certain  political 
attaches,  but  they  have  not  proved  themselves 
of  very  much  value,  partly  for  the  reason  that 
they  have  usually  come  into  the  conflict  too  late. 
You  do  not  stand  much  chance  of  arbitrating  a 
difficulty  when  a  man  has  got  his  fighting  blood 
up  and  is  bound  to  win.  That  is  one  reason  why 
arbitration  boards,  that  are  really  political 
boards,  fail. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  unofficial  arbitration 
boards  because  more  and  more  the  disputes  in 
industry  become  technical,  have  technical  points. 
If  they  are  to  be  arbitrated  it  must  be  by  men 
of  technical  knowledge,  not  politicians  or  benev- 
olent minded  men  from  the  general  public.  The 
tendency  of  labour  is  toward  arbitration  but  an 
arbitration  which  has  a  technical  knowledge  of 
the  situation,  to  permanent  trade  boards  in  var- 
ious industries.  In  the  Garment  Workers'  trade 
there  has  been  successful  development  toward 
that  end.  The  last  garment  workers'  strike  in 
Chicago  was  occasioned  first  because  of  the  low 
wages,  and  second,  the  continual  unjust  exac- 
tions of  the  local  foreman.  Then  there  was  no 
opportunity  for  collective  bargaining,  no  measure 
by  which  workers  could  get  their  complaints 
before  the  real  owners  and  managers  of  the  in- 


TRADE  UNIONS  17 

dustry.  Finally  in  one  of  the  shops  of  the  west 
side  two  or  three  girls  went  down  to  the  office 
and  after  getting  by  the  different  employees  they 
finally  got  into  the  sanctum  sanctorum  of  the 
big  man  himself.  He  listened  very  patiently  to 
their  grievances  and  told  them  it  must  be 
remedied,  and  be  remedied  by  the  foreman  con- 
cerned. Then  he  telephoned  to  the  foreman  that 
these  things  must  be  changed.  But  it  was  too 
late.  Those  girls  were  afraid  to  face  the  little 
petty  tyrant  who  had  been  the  occasion  of  their 
going  to  see  the  big  man,  and  on  the  way  back 
the  strike  started  that  affected  afterwards  one 
hundred  thousand  people.  Now  when  the  man- 
agers of  that  industry  were  told  that  these 
workers  wanted  an  opportunity  for  collective 
bargaining  they  said  it  could  not  be  done,  that 
one  simply  could  not  devise  any  measure  for 
permanent  joint  management  in  this  trade.  But 
inside  of  six  months  such  a  measure  was  devised 
which  not  only  settled  that  strike  but  settled 
every  other  difficulty  that  arose  in  that  garment 
workers'  trade  thereafter.  And  these  same 
owners  to-day  are  on  record  that  they  do  not  see 
how  they  ever  got  along  without  a  permanent 
trade  board  to  settle  such  disputes. 

Of  course  there  is  the  use  of  the  Erdmann  Act 
in  transportation,  but  this  was  used  only  once  in 
the  first  few  years  of  its  existence.  Since  1908  it 


18  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

has  been  used  sixty  times.  When  you  once  estab- 
lish a  railroad  wage  rate  it  extends  over  a  whole 
system  and  it  is  absolutely  maintained.  All  men 
are  hired  on  that  basis  and  that  is  one  reason 
why  that  kind  of  arbitration  is  particularly  suc- 
cessful in  that  industry.  But  when  you  come 
down  to  other  industries  that  deal  directly  with 
the  making  of  goods,  the  only  real  way  out  of 
continued  disputes  is  to  have  a  joint  trade  board 
on  which  the  workers  are  adequately  represented 
which  can  deal  with  grievances  as  they  arise  and 
before  they  reach  the  fighting  stage.  It  is  prac- 
tically not  an  arbitration  board  but  a  conciliation 
board,  a  board  of  justice,  the  expression  again  of 
the  democratic  principle  of  collective  bargaining. 
It  is  the  first  expression  of  it  in  the  industrial 
world. 

The  public  is  tremendously  interested  in 
getting  peace  in  industry  but  if  the  public  wants 
to  avoid  industrial  disputes  then  the  public  must 
care  more  for  justice  (very  much  more)  than 
it  cares  for  peace.  And  the  emphasis  must  be 
put  not  on  developing  arbitration  boards  to  try 
to  settle  wars  after  they  have  started,  but  on 
securing  such  proper  conditions  in  industry  as 
will  remove  the  causes  of  war.  If  the  public  had 
been  interested  in  seeing  that  the  labour  laws  in 
Colorado  were  kept  and  that  conditions  were 
right  in  the  Calumet  mines  the  public  would  not 


TRADE  UNIONS  19 

have  had  to  worry  itself  so  much  about  the  situ- 
ation that  later  developed,  and  until  we,  the  third 
party  to  this  situation,  care  a  great  deal  more 
than  we  now  care  about  securing  proper  and  just 
conditions  in  industry  we  shall  continually  have 
to  bear  the  burdens  of  recurrent  industrial  dis- 
putes. 

LIMITATION  OF  OUTPUT 

The  charge  is  made  that  the  trade  union 
cripples  the  efficiency  of  individuals  and  limits 
total  production.  But  we  must  remember  that 
this  charge  lies  also  against  capital,  for  capital 
limits  production,  shuts  down  to  hold  up  prices, 
closes  out  factories  altogether  to  maintain  a 
monopoly,  and  has  even  been  known  to  destroy 
goods  in  order  to  hold  up  prices.  The  trouble 
is  that  as  long  as  men  are  running  industry  J6r 
profit  and  other  men  are  working  for  profit  each 
group  is  going  to  endeavour  at  times  to  limit  out- 
put in  order  to  hold  its  own  self-interest;  your 
charge  here,  your  fundamental  unethical  condi- 
tion, inheres  not  in  either  group  but  in  the  very 
nature  of  the  present  organisation  of  industry. 
Now  labour  limits  production  by  limiting  the 
hours  of  work  and  objecting  to  the  use  of 
machines.  It  advances  again  the  contention 
that  these  are  necessary  defence  measures,  that 
it  must  defend  the  employee  against  destruction 


20  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

from  overwork  and  low  wages.  And  the  facts 
justify  labour's  contention.  There  are  only 
three  defences  of  labour  against  the  pace-maker, 
against  the  speeding-up  process,  against  a  mis- 
guided efficiency  that  is  seeking  only  short  times 
results  in  immediate  production  and  is  not  prop- 
erly aware  of  the  dangerous  long  times  results 
in  the  lives  of  the  worker.  One  is  the  good  will 
of  the  human  employer;  the  second,  protective 
legislation;  and  the  third,  labour's  own  organ- 
ised power  and  its  own  measures.  The  life  of  the 
worker  must  not  be  used  up  in  the  mere  making 
of  goods.  That  is  a  secondary  thing.  It  must 
be  made  subordinate  to  the  protection  and  devel- 
opment of  the  life  of  the  worker  out  of  which 
society  itself  exists.  The  sin  of  limiting  produc- 
tion (if  there  be  a  sin),  inheres  in  both  sides. 
It  is  unethical  to  destroy  both  a  man  and  his 
work  and  it  is  unethical  to  require  of  a  man  less 
than  his  best  work.  It  is  destructive  of  the  very 
soul  of  a  man  that  he  should  put  into  his  work 
something  less  than  the  best,  for  a  man  only 
grows  at  his  work  unto  the  full  stature  of  man- 
hood as  he  puts  the  very  best  that  is  in  him  into 
the  work  that  he  is  trying  to  do.  Now  when 
you  come  to  limit  a  man's  work,  whether  or  not 
it  will  be  morally  destructive  of  the  man  depends 
upon  the  motive  for  which  it  is  limited.  If  it  is 
limited  for  social  needs,  to  protect  the  group 


TRADE  UNIONS  21 

from  destruction,  it  is  ethical  rather  than  unethi- 
cal. The  trouble  is,  of  course,  that  when  men 
are  taught  that  production  must  be  limited  (indi- 
vidual production  for  the  good  of  the  whole,  as 
a  necessary  defence  measure)  that  develops 
shirking  and  loafing.  It  is  simply  one  evidence 
again  of  the  moral  degeneracy  that  follows  after 
a  war  and  war  measures.  As  long  as  you  have 
got  a  warfare  here  between  the  making  of  profits 
and  the  protection  of  the  workers  you  are  bound 
to  have  some  moral  degeneration  follow  that 
warfare  on  the  side  of  both  of  the  participants. 

And  what  about  the  effects  on  society  as  a 
wrhole?  We  are  living  under  a  system  of  pro- 
duction that  has  been  blindly  carried  forward. 
I  go  into  one  community  and  find  thousands  out 
of  work  and  in  another  community  find  factories 
working  night  and  day.  What  we  have  here  is 
simply  an  absolutely  blind  and  unintelligent 
system  of  production.  Over-production  under 
that  system  means  unemployment  and  low  wages 
and  it  means  burdens  thrown  upon  the  whole 
community.  Of  course  if  we  had  the  practical 
knowledge  and  ethical  sense  to  organise  industry 
co-ordinately,  to  satisfy  our  needs,  we  would  not 
have  over-production  and  limitation  of  output. 
But  until  that  day  comes  labour  must  protect 
itself,  and  in  doing  that  it  is  to  a  certain  extent 
protecting  the  whole  community  from  the  results 


22  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

of  the  blind  process  which  simply  drives  on  until 
it  destroys  both  the  ethical  sense  and  the  physical 
power  of  the  worker. 

What  we  have  to  do  in  the  present  situation 
is  to  strike  a  mean  between  the  killing  of  time 
and  the  killing  of  men,  between  the  loafing  of 
labour  and  the  driving  of  capital.  And  while 
we  are  attempting  to  find  that  mean,  we  have  also 
got  to  move  on  to  that  better  day  when  we  shall 
organise  production  intelligently  and  ethically, 
that  day  when 

"  No  one  shall  work  for  money, 
And  no  one  shall  work  for  fame, 
But  each  for  the  joy  of  working,"  .  .  . 

Towards  the  coming  of  that  great  day 
organised  labour  is  a  potent  force.  When  that 
day  comes  we  shall  not  need  trade  unions  and 
their  policy,  but  until  it  does  come  we  need  them 
very  badly. 


TRADE  UNIONS  23 


Q.  The  speaker  spoke  about  the  interest  of  the 
third  party,  the  public,  in  strikes.  Inasmuch  as 
the  public  is  divided  up  into  about  10  per  cent, 
capitalists  and  90  per  cent,  workers,  is  it  not  a 
mistake  to  speak  about  the  public  as  a  third 
party? 

A.  The  classification  is  not  quite  correct. 
You  have  five  groups  of  the  gainfully  employed 
which  comprise  practically  your  public,  but  even 
some  of  your  capitalists  are  workers.  In  these 
groups  of  the  gainfully  employed  the  largest 
single  group  is  the  agricultural  workers,  about 
eleven  millions,  and  then  you  have  got  your  pro- 
fessional workers,  and  then  you  have  got  your 
domestic  workers,  so  that  what  you  have  in  your 
industrial  disputes  to-day  is  only  about  twelve 
million,  about  7  per  cent,  of  the  public. 

Q.  Does  the  speaker  believe  that  the  principle 
of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  the 
division  of  interest  between  capital  and  labour, 
is  an  economic  fallacy? 

A.  I  will  endeavour  to  answer  that  question 
to-morrow. 

Q.  Did  not  the  act  of  the  McNamaras  prove 
the  inefficiency  of  the  trade  union  to  cope  with 
the  ever  increasing  power  of  the  capitalist? 

A.  I  think  it  proved  rather  the  barbarity  of 
the  attitude  of  a  certain  group  of  capitalists  in 


24  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

this  country  towards  the  efforts  of  labour  to 
find  a  way  out.  It  was  an  act  of  desperation; 
it  was  the  rat  in  the  corner.  It  did  to  a  certain 
extent  show  that  the  trade  union  had  its  limit, 
but  that  was  only  a  part  of  the  proof. 

Q.  In  a  year's  time  the  labour  agent  handles 
seventy-five  disputes  but  no  strike  occurs,  and  at 
the  end  of  the  year's  time  he  can  show  that  his 
five  hundred  men  are  earning  $500  more.  Do 
you  know  of  any  better  method  than  that  of  the 
labour  agent  to  settle  disputes? 

A.  This  is  the  best  method  under  the  present 
system  of  production  if  it  is  incorporated  in  the 
trade  agreement  but  it  depends  a  good  deal  on 
the  personality  of  the  business  agent. 

Q.  Do  you  justify  the  closed  shop  on  the 
ground  of  efficiency  or  on  the  ground  of  ethics? 

A.  In  regard  to  efficiency  I  think  the  predom- 
inant testimony  of  the  manufacturers  themselves 
in  the  highly  organised  trades  proves  that  it  is 
more  efficient;  otherwise  I  am  quite  sure  they 
would  not  go  into  the  agreement  and  under  the 
present  system  it  is  more  profitable  to  them.  On 
ethical  grounds  when  you  are  dealing  with  the 
closed  shop  under  coercive  methods  it  is  not  ethi- 
cal. No  war  methods  are  ethical.  But  when 
you  get  a  shop  which  is  practically  a  closed  shop, 
where  there  are  all  union  men  working  but  where 
the  door  has  not  been  shut  by  an  arbitrary  act 


TRADE  UNIONS  25 

of  coercion,  where  the  shop  is  practically  closed 
but  it  does  not  deny  the  right  of  employment  to 
any  man,  you  have  a  highly  ethical  situation. 

Q.  Do  you  prefer  the  preferential  shop? 

A.  In  certain  situations. 

Q.  Is  there  any  tendency  on  the  part  of  organ- 
ised labour  to  organise  men  without  trades? 

A.  The  lecture  on  Thursday  will  answer  that. 

Q.  Do  you  think  that  industrial  democracy 
will  precede  or  follow  political  democracy? 

A.  The  demand  for  industrial  democracy  rises 
out  of  the  realisation  of  the  right  of  political 
democracy. 

Q.  What  is  the  use  of  giving  wrorkers  indus- 
trial democracy  if  they  have  not  political  democ- 
racy? 

A.  They  are  mutually  independent  but  develop 
side  by  side.  I  do  not  think  that  question  is 
practically  before  us.  We  now  have  a  certain 
amount  of  political  democracy. 

Q.  What  is  the  objection  to  the  Compulsory 
Arbitration  Act? 

A.  The  objection  of  labour  to  the  Compulsory 
Arbitration  Act,  and  also  to  the  Canadian  one, 
which  requires  publicity  and  notification  for 
thirty  days,  and  prohibits  a  strike  or  lockout 
during  that  time,  is  that  they  apply  unequally  to 
capital  and  labour;  that  capital  can  avoid  the 
consequences  of  such  a  law  and  its  actual  restric- 


26  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

tions  which  labour  cannot  do.  It  cannot  call  a 
strike  and  labour  is  placed  at  a  disadvantage 
because  capital  can  practically  shut  down  and 
discharge  men.  Labour  finds  itself  beaten  under 
the  enforcement  of  that  act. 

Q.  Take  an  employer  that  puts  in  a  new 
machine  and  the  man  that  runs  the  machine  is 
paid  $1.50  a  day  where  the  man  that  did  the  work 
before  was  paid  $4.50.  Do  you  think  he  is  justi- 
fied in  putting  in  a  machine  that  can  only 
cheapen  the  cost  of  labour  without  adding  to  the 
efficiency  of  men  or  bettering  the  work? 

A.  Under  the  ethics  of  our  present  profit  mak- 
ing system,  of  course,  he  is  justified.  Socially 
speaking,  for  it  is  a  social  responsibility  that  we 
can't  lay  on  an  individual  person,  we  can't  allow 
that  thing  to  be  done. 

Q.  What  good  does  it  do  to  strike?  Since 
1906  wages  have  gone  up  but  necessities  have 
gone  up  too. 

A.  Quite  true,  but  if  you  had  not  had  the 
efforts  of  unions  you  would  have  a  greater  dis- 
parity. 

Q.  Of  what  benefit  is  it  to  the  employer  to 
employ  union  labour,  and  how  does  the  labour 
union  prove  that  union  labour  is  of  benefit  to  the 
employer? 

A.  In  this  city  I  know  of  one  case  where  the 
agent  of  a  certain  union  showed  employers  in  a 


TRADE  UNIONS  27 

certain  trade  that  they  were  making  for  their 
own  destruction  by  the  employment  of  men  im- 
properly qualified  to  do  the  work,  and  were 
inaugurating  a  cut-throat  competition.  That  is 
only  one  case. 


II.  SOCIALISM 

WE  are  considering  to-day  simply  one  aspect  of 
Socialism,  taking  it  merely  as  the  political  ex- 
pression of  the  labour  movement,  the  attempt  on 
the  part  of  the  working  class  to  achieve  their 
industrial  ideals  through  political  action.  For 
Socialism  claims  to  be,  of  course,  the  working 
class  programme  in  the  political  field.  The  first 
question  is,  To  what  extent  is  this  claim  justi- 
fied? Is  Socialism  really  the  programme  of  the 
working  class?  The  Communist  Manifesto, 
which  was  the  declaration  of  independence  of  the 
Socialist  state,  uttered  the  thrilling  slogan, 
"  Workers  of  the  World,  unite.  You  have  noth- 
ing to  lose  but  your  chains."  The  appeal  then 
came  from  outside  the  producing  group.  To 
what  extent  has  it  been  answered  by  the  working 
class? 

WORKING  CLASS  PROGRAM 

>  It  is  a  definite  attempt  to  create  a  working- 
class  consciousness,   to  develop  self-realisation 
and  self-expression  on  the  part  of  the  producers. 
But    the    Socialist   should  not  be  allowed  to 
suffer  under  the  imputation  of  attempting  to 


SOCIALISM  29 

create  class  hatred.  No  intelligent  Socialist 
endeavours  to  stir  up  class  hatred.  Of  course 
the  doctrine  of  class  consciousness  preached  by 
ignorant  men  unfamiliar  with  Socialist  philoso- 
phy may,  and  undoubtedly  does,  have  a  result 
neither  intended  nor  desired  by  the  makers  of 
the  Socialist  programme.  There  is,  however, 
more  danger  of  class  hatred  and  class  opposition 
being  stirred  up  by  those  who  would  put  the 
whole  blame  for  social  conditions  upon  individ- 
ual malefactors,  for  if  that  doctrine  ever  gets 
hold  of  the  working  class  of  this  or  any  other 
country  the  tendency  will  be  to  reach  these  indi- 
vidual malefactors  and  the  class  to  which  they 
belong  with  punishment. 

The  real  object  of  developing  class  conscious- 
ness, the  real  object  of  the  intelligent  leaders  of 
the  Socialist  movement,  is  to  secure  the  abolition 
of  all  classes,  to  get  the  working  class  to  be  so 
conscious  of  the  disabilities  under  which  they 
suffer  through  the  class  division  of  society  that 
they  will  not  only  redeem  themselves  but  redeem 
society  forever  from  any  such  condition.  To 
what  extent  has  there  developed  a  genuine  work- 
ing class,  that  is,  a  self-conscious  working  class? 
It  is  impossible  to  make  an  economic  grouping 
here.  That  attempt  of  early  Socialism  has  of 
necessity  been  abandoned.  There  is  no  such 
rapid  division  of  society  into  capitalist  and  pro- 


30  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

letariat  as  early  Socialism  foretold.  There  is  no 
such  abolition,  economically  speaking,  of  the 
middle  class  as  was  forecast  by  early  Socialists. 

Economic  groups,  that  is  divisions  'according 
to  income,  tend  more  and  more  to  merge.  The 
wage  earner  becomes  through  the  investment  of 
his  saving  (the  higher  class  of  wage  earner) 
more  or  less  of  a  small  capitalist.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  divide  the  working  class  from  the  capi- 
talist class  to-day  simply  on  the  grounds  of  pure 
income  and  economic  self-interest.  The  working 
class  to-day  instead  of  being  simply  an  economic 
group  is  an  ethical  and  psychological  group.  It 
is  a  group  that  thinks  in  certain  terms  and  has 
certain  ideals  rather  than  a  group  which  has  a 
certain  amount  of  income,  rather  than  a  group 
which  is  a  wage  earning  group  as  opposed  to  a 
capitalist,  investing  group  entirely. 

The  leading  Socialists  are  telling  us  that  the 
working  class  is  all  those  who  live  entirely  by 
their  own  labour,  and  then  they  face  the  eco- 
nomic fact  that  I  have  just  referred  to,  that  many 
who  live  entirely  by  their  own  labour  are  never- 
theless investing  some  of  their  surplus  funds 
against  the  future.  And  so  they  say  the  working 
class  to-day  is  all  those  who  live  entirely  or 
principally  by  their  own  labour.  But  that  does 
not  appear  to  be  an  adequate  standard  of  classi- 
fication. 


SOCIALISM  31 

What  about  the  folks  who  find  themselves 
under  our  inheritance  system  living  entirely  off 
the  labour  of  others  and  who  yet  come  to  see  that 
that  is  unethical,  who  find  themselves  in  a  posi- 
tion that  they  wish  to  disown  and  yet  if  they 
should  abandon  that  position  and  come  down 
into  the  economic  producing  group  they  would 
increase  competition  and  tend  to  make  condi- 
tions harder  for  the  group  below.  They  reject 
the  principle  under  which  they  are  living  but  are 
yet  endeavouring  to  the  best  of  their  ability  so 
to  shape  their  conduct  as  to  change  the  whole 
situation.  Now  there  are  only  a  few  of  these 
people  but  they  belong  with  the  working  class. 
They  believe  in  the  working  class  ideals  and  they 
endeavour  to  live  by  them.  And  so  we  ought  to 
say  that  the  working  class  to-day  are  those  who 
believe  in  so  organising  life  that  all  shall  produce 
for  the  good  of  society,  that  none  shall  take 
anything  which  they  do  not  create,  in  value  that 
is,  of  course. 

To  what  extent -has  the  working  class  ideal 
captured  the  labour  movement  in  this  country? 
Of  course,  there  has  been  a  mistaken  warfare 
back  and  forth  between  the  leaders  of  the  trade 
union  movement  and  certain  of  the  Socialists, 
which  warfare  did  not  exist,  and  does  not  exist, 
in  Europe  to  any  such  extent  as  here.  The 
Socialist  movement  has  had  to  face  the  folly  of 


32  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

some  of  its  defects  and  has  had  the  bitter  oppo- 
sition of  most  of  the  leaders  of  the  trade  union 
movement  in  this  country.  The  result  is  that 
the  Socialist  group  in  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor  has  been  able  in  the  last  few  years  to 
show  about  one- third  of  the  total  vote,  and 
there  they  stand.  But  that  does  not  represent 
their  strength  in  the  labour  movement  of  this 
country.  You  have  other  evidences  within  the 
labour  movement.  They  have  affected  it  very 
seriously  and  have  modified  the  attitude  of  the 
trade  union  leaders  in  this  country  toward  polit- 
ical action.  Early  trade  unions  in  this  country 
absolutely  disclaimed  political  action.  Under 
the  impetus  of  the  Socialist  movement  this  posi- 
tion has  been  abandoned  and  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Labor  now  takes  a  political  attitude. 
They  will  support  those  men  who  stand  for  their 
programme  politically,  and  they  will  at  times 
oppose  those  who  do  not  stand  for  it.  They  will, 
of  course,  support  trade  union  men  for  public 
office.  The  evidence  of  a  still  further  develop- 
ment is  the  fact  that  the  Washington  Federa- 
tion of  Labor  (that  is  the  State  of  Washington 
on  the  Pacific  Coast)  has  come  out  absolutely 
in  favour  not  only  of  candidates  who  will  stand 
for  the  platform  of  the  labour  union  but  for 
working  class  candidates. 

There    are    other    evidences  of  the  extent  to 


SOCIALISM  33 

which  the  Socialist  movement  is  spreading 
through  the  American  labour  movement.  The 
fact  is  that  within  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  you  can  find  evidences  of  working  class 
action  in  the  industrial  field  on  the  part  of  those 
who  disavow  the  political  movement.  Both  in 
the  Chicago  and  San  Francisco  labour  bodies 
there  have  been  notable  and  historic  discussions 
over  which  took  priority  in  the  case  of  industrial 
disputes,  labour's  obligations  to  labour  or 
labour's  obligations  to  capital;  that  is,  in  the 
event  of  a  strike  in  a  certain  trade  should  the 
allied  trades  keep  their  contracts  with  capital  or 
should  they  break  them,  holding  more  sacred  and 
prior  their  obligations  to  fellow  labourers.  It 
is  interesting  to  note  in  that  discussion  and  fight 
that  prominent  Socialist  leaders,  men  of  national 
weight  and  standing,  opposed  violation  of  con- 
tract, opposed  working  class  action  in  the  indus- 
trial field  to  the  disregard  of  its  obligation  to 
capital ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  men  who  advo- 
cated this  policy  were  men  who  were  bitter  oppo- 
nents of  the  Socialist  political  programme  and 
action. 

The  Socialist  movement  purposes  in  its  polit- 
ical action  first  to  realise  the  immediate  demands 
of  the  trade  union  movement.  It  purposes  to 
secure  them  by  legislation,  as  being  a  quicker 
and  a  more  general  process,  as  being  a  process 


34  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

which  will  achieve  the  results  over  a  larger  terri- 
tory in  quicker  time  and  will  secure  support  to 
that  end  from  the  capitalist  group.  In  that 
endeavour,  the  Socialists  point  out  the  fact  that 
other  allied  forces  can  be  enlisted.  They  are 
seeking  abolition  of  child  labour,  the  protection 
of  women  in  industry,  and  proper  liberty  of 
action  for  organised  labour  under  the  law,—  the 
immediate  things  which  organised  labour  is  itself 
fighting  for.  It  may  be  interesting  to  note  that 
the  American  Federation  of  Labor  at  its  last 
session  took  a  distinctly  reactionary  step  in  this 
matter  and  opposed  the  endeavour  to  secure  the 
eight  hour  day  by  legislation. 

Of  course  the  attempt  at  political  action  does 
enlist  other  allied  forces.  For  example,  the  Fed- 
erated Council  of  Churches  in  this  country,  rep- 
resenting some  thirty  denominations,  of  seven- 
teen million  people,  are  on  record  as  being  will- 
ing to  support  legislative  measures  embodying 
these  just  demands  of  labour  for  proper  protec- 
tion and  relief  from  over-work ;  and  by  the  same 
token,  the  organised  social  workers  in  this  coun- 
try are  on  record  to  the  same  effect,  so  that  you 
have  these  groups  that  can  be  allied  along  with 
the  labour  group  to  secure  legislation  for  its 
immediate  advance. 

The  Socialist  political  programme  goes  very 
much  further  than  that.  It  is  not  content  to 


SOCIALISM  85 

accept  these  measures  for  the  immediate  im- 
provement of  labour  as  a  compromise.  They  are 
to  be  simply  steps  to  far  more  significant 
measures,  for  Socialism  demands  not  only  the 
improvement  of  improper  industrial  conditions 
but  the  reconstruction  of  the  whole  industrial 
system  around  a  totally  different  principle.  It 
requires  the  abolition  of  the  private  ownership 
of  the  means  of  production  and  distribution 
through  collective  ownership  and  through  demo- 
cratic management.  It  requires  the  abolition  of 
the  wage  system  and  the  process  by  which  the 
surplus  value  created  by  the  worker  is  automat- 
ically appropriated  by  the  capitalist  group.  It 
requires  the  organisation  of  industry  around  the 
principle  of  service  instead  of  around  the  prin- 
ciple of  gain.  It  demands  that  goods  shall  be 
made  for  use  and  not  for  profit.  This  is,  of 
course,  not  a  change  in  the  form  of  organisation 
but  in  the  very  spirit  and  nature  of  the  whole 
industrial  procedure,  and  it  demands  corre- 
spondingly a  similar  change  in  the  whole  social 
organisation. 

Here  you  have  a  significant  event  in  the 
world's  history.  Here  you  have  the  attempt  to 
organise  both  industry  and  society  around  the 
ideals  of  the  worker  instead  of  around  the  ideals 
of  the  thinker  and  the  fighter.  Here  you  have 
a  group,  which  has  never  before  expressed  itself 


36  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

in  history,  coming  on  to  the  stage  of  action,  and 
it  is  the  group  of  greatest  number,  it  is  the  group 
of  greatest  power  —  when  its  power  is  once 
developed  and  realised.  Such  a  movement  could 
only  be  possible  under  democracy;  such  a  pro- 
gramme to  realise  such  a  hope  could  only  be 
realised,  could  only  be  expressed  under  a  demo- 
cratic system  of  government.  But  under  that 
system  such  expression  is  inevitable.  For  the 
first  time  in  history  the  manual  worker,  the  in- 
dustrial worker,  has  been  given  a  stake  in  the 
commonwealth,  has  been  given  place  and  oppor- 
tunity in  determining  the  government.  For  the 
first  time  in  history,  that  same  worker  has  been 
educated,  has  been  taught  to  read,  has  been 
taught  to  think;  therefore,  for  the  first  time  in 
history  his  capacities  for  action  have  been  de- 
veloped, and  now  those  capacities  for  action  are 
going  to  express  themselves.  Nothing  can  stop 
that.  The  world  is  not  going  back  from  its  gains 
in  democratic  government  and  universal  educa- 
tion. And  that  being  the  case,  it  is  inevitable 
that  this  great  group  of  power,  which  in  past 
ages  has  been  simply  the  mud-sill  over  which 
other  folk  walked  to  comfort  and  climbed  to 
power,  which  all  through  history  has  been  at  the 
bottom  of  the  social  structure,  shall  now  stand 
upon  its  feet  and  take  its  appointed  place  in  the 
destinies  of  the  race. 


SOCIALISM  37 

Now  for  those  who  believe  in  the  ethics  of 
Christianity,  it  ought  to  be  pointed  out  that  one 
of  the  great  forces  that  have  created  both  dem- 
ocracy and  popular  education  and  have  made  this 
movement  for  the  development  of  the  working 
class  possible  has  been  the  force  of  the  principles 
which  are  embodied  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus. 
In  those  teachings  there  sounded  for  the  first 
time  in  history,  with  a  voice  of  universal  author- 
ity, and  with  absolute  clearness  the  long-cher- 
ished but  long-unexpressed  desires  and  hopes  of 
the  workers  of  all  the  ages.  There  spoke  a 
worker,  not  a  ruler,  not  an  exploiter.  There 
spoke  one  who  worked  with  his  hands  and  so 
came  close  to  the  heart  of  the  great  bulk  of  the 
human  race,  and  also,  in  so  doing,  came  close  to 
the  very  heart  of  the  Eternal. 

THE  INDICTMENT  OF  CAPITALISM 

To  what  extent  does  this  programme  which 
the  working  class  are  forming  —  and  remember 
that  it  is  in  the  making,  it  is  not  formed  yet  — 
to  what  extent  does  this  programme  involve  an 
indictment  of  capitalism ;  and  the  strongest  part 
of  the  Socialist  propaganda  in  this  country  has 
been  its  indictment  of  capitalism.  It  is  not  an 
indictment  of  the  capitalist;  that  needs  to  be 
understood.  That  indictment  needs  to  be  made 
sometimes  but  the  Socialists  are  quite  willing  to 


38  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

leave  that  to  the  law  as  at  present  made  and 
administered.  I  think  at  times  that  the  law 
needs  to  get  a  little  speeding  up  process  in  that 
direction.  I  think,  for  example,  that  the  men 
who  have  recently  been  speculating  in  the  hunger 
of  the  race  have  put  themselves  beyond  the  pale 
even  of  decent  capitalist  ethics.  But  the  Social- 
ist is  not  concerned  with  indicting  individual 
capitalists.  He  believes  that  they  as  much  as 
anyone  else  are  victims  of  the  system.  His 
indictment  is  against  the  whole  system  of  indus- 
try as  organised  on  the  capitalist  basis. 

First  we  want  to  understand  that  the  Socialist 
does  not  simply  want  to  abolish  individual  own- 
ership of  the  means  of  production  and  distribu- 
tion of  the  sources  of  wealth..  His  contention  is 
not  simply  against  individual  ownership  which, 
of  course,  centres  the  resources  upon  which  the 
whole  of  life  depends  into  a  few  hands.  Against 
such  individualistic  ownership  you  might  put  the 
term  collectivism,  and  you  could  have  collectiv- 
ism without  Socialism.  You  might  have  a  form 
of  state  ownership  which  would  abolish  individ- 
ual ownership  of  the  means  of  production  and 
distribution  but  which  would  be  nothing  else  but 
state  capitalism.  Not  a  little  of  the  state  Social- 
ism of  Europe  is  nothing  other  than  state  capi- 
talism, both  ownership  and  the  capitalistic  prin- 
ciple being  transferred  to  the  state  collectively. 


SOCIALISM  89 

Something  more  is  involved  in  capitalism  than 
individual  ownership  of  the  means  of  life.  It  is 
the  carrying  on  of  industry  for  the  mere  piling 
up  of  economic  wealth,  for  the  mere  increase  of 
capital,  the  mere  making  of  goods  —  for  the  sake 
of  having  goods  and  getting  profit  out  of  them. 
That  is  the  fundamental  sin  in  the  capitalist 
organisation  of  industry.  The  development  of 
human  life,  the  great,  vital  interests  of  human 
welfare  are  made  secondary  to  the  production  of 
goods.  The  increase  of  capital  is  the  goal  of  the 
system. 

Now  what  indictment  does  Socialism  bring 
against  such  a  system  of  the  carrying  on  of  in- 
dustry, the  making  of  goods  for  the  sake  of 
profit  and  increase  of  wealth  rather  than  that 
goods  should  serve  human  life  and  develop  the 
highest  values  of  human  life?  And  Socialism  is 
not  alone  in  its  indictment  of  capital.  If  you 
will  read  what  Professor  Brooks  Adams,  of  this 
city,  says  in  his  "Theory  of  Social  Revolutions," 
you  will  find  as  severe  an  indictment  of  the 
efficiency  of  the  capitalist  system  of  industry  as 
could  have  been  penned.  If  you  will  read  "  Be- 
tween Eras  "  by.  Professor  Small  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Chicago,  you  will  find  a  most  scathing 
moral  indictment  of  capitalism,  and  both  of  these 
come  from  non-socialist  sources.  The  burden  of 
their  testimony  is,  that  while  capitalism  has  ful- 


40  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

filled  a  necessary  part  in  human  development, 
and  while  its  contribution  to  the  human  race  has 
been  extremely  significant,  while  we  are  all  in- 
debted to  it  for  many  things,  it  has  now  become 
an  outworn  process,  inadequate  to  meet  the  needs 
of  the  present;  that  it  is  like  one  of  its  old 
machines  that  needs  to  be  put  in  the  scrap  heap, 
to  give  place  to  a  more  intelligent  and  more 
efficient  method  of  doing  the  world's  work. 

Now  it  would  be  well  for  us,  big  capitalists  and 
small  capitalists,  middle-class,  professional  men 
and  workers,  if  we  could  look  at  that  testimony 
dispassionately,  considering  it  as  an  indictment 
of  a  system  and  not  of  persons;  if  we  could 
separate  the  personal  element  and  face  that 
situation  on  economic  and  ethical  grounds,  on 
the  basis  of  industrial  and  social  efficiency. 
For  that  is  the  part  of  the  indictment,  that  the 
capitalist  system  no  longer  fulfils  its  own  cher- 
ished ideal  of  efficiency;  that  it  is  no  longer 
adequate  to  do  the  work  of  the  world  properly; 
that  under  its  competitive  organisation  we  are 
securing  a  break-down  both  in  the  process  of 
production  and  the  process  of  distribution;  that 
production  is  not  adequately  handled  to  meet  the 
needs  of  the  world  to-day;  that  we  have  contin- 
ued cycles  of  prosperity  and  depression,  of  over- 
production and  under-production,  of  good  times 
and  hard  times,  of  panics  with  all  that  they  infer 


SOCIALISM  41 

in  unemployment  and  uncertainty,  even  to  the 
capitalist  group. 

The  evidence  for  that  of  course  lies  with 
economists,  but  the  man  in  the  street  can  see  how 
the  system  practically  breaks  down,  especially 
if  he  be  a  man  who  travels  about  the  country. 
He  will  find  in  one  place  an  abundance  of  goods, 
in  another  place  a  scarcity,  in  one  place  over- 
employment and  in  another  under-employment. 
He  will  find,  the  produce  of  the  fields  and 
orchards  rotting  on  the  ground  and  being  thrown 
into  the  sea  at  the  ports  in  some  sections,  and  in 
other  places  he  will  find  folks  going  hungry  and 
still  others  finding  their  incomes  pressing  ever 
closer  on  the  high  cost  of  living.  He  will  see 
the  enormous  waste  involved  in  the  present 
anarchistic  method  of  distribution. 

Some  one  with  a  brain  for  figures  and  an  im- 
agination has  computed  that  the  total  waste  of 
our  present  method  of  doing  industry  and  busi- 
ness amounts  to  six  thousand  dollars  a  year  for 
every  family  in  the  United  States.  That  may  be 
rather  high  but  there  is  enough  waste  going  on 
to  relieve  all  the  hardship  of  the  world.  In  the 
face  of  a  surplus  production  of  food  stuffs  taking 
the  world  over,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  have 
produced  one  and  a  half  times  more  food  than 
will  feed  the  world  in  comfort,  we  have  whole 
races  living  on  the  verge  of  starvation.  That  is 


42  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

an  indication  that  our  present  method  of  produc- 
tion and  distribution  is  no  longer  adequate,  that 
it  is  not  measuring  up  to  the  present  intellectual 
progress  of  the  race.  For  the  fact  that  we  real- 
ise the  inefficiency  shows  that  we  have  sufficient 
intellectual  capacity  now  to  meet  the  situation. 
To-day  by  social  knowledge  socially  acquired  and 
social  labour  socially  exercised,  we  conquer 
nature,  in  both  the  products  of  the  soil  and  in 
disease,  and  still  millions  starve  and  die.  To- 
day by  social  knowledge  socially  acquired  and 
socially  exercised  we  avert  the  disasters  of  the 
waters  and  the  disasters  of  contagion  and  still 
we  have  our  thousands  stalking  up  and  down  our 
streets  in  unemployment.  If  you  need  any  more 
testimony  than  mine  and  that  of  thousands  of 
others  concerning  the  inefficiency  of  the  capital- 
istic system  of  industry  to  meet  the  needs  of  this 
modern  world,  take  the  testimony  of  one  of  its 
own  high  priests.  Certainly  the  head  of  the  steel 
trust  in  this  country  is  entitled  to  speak  with 
respect  on  this  question  and  the  most  significant 
thing  I  have  seen  in  the  American  press  in  the 
last  few  years  was  Mr.  Gary's  admission  when 
he  faced  the  situation  of  unemployment  in  New 
York  as  chairman  of  the  committee  there,  that 
the  whole  unemployment  situation  in  this  coun- 
try was  an  evidence  of  bad  management.  It  is 
a  social  gain  to  have  that  admission. 


SOCIALISM  43 

But  when  you  come  to  face  the  moral  situation, 
the  question  is  more  significant  still.  There  are 
both  economists  and  industrial  leaders  who  tell 
us  that  the  present  inefficiency  of  the  capitalistic 
system  is  not  due  to  any  inherent  defect,  but  sim- 
ply due  to  some  minor  mal-adjustrnents,  that  the 
machine  can  still  be  cranked  up  and  made  to  run 
to  meet  the  needs  of  the  race.  That  will  depend 
upon  whether  there  is  any  fundamental  moral 
quality  lacking,  for  you  need  something  more 
than  efficiency  and  science  to  meet  the  needs  of 
this  modern  world.  You  cannot  organise  the 
business  of  the  world  to-day  to  meet  the  demands 
of  the  intellect  and  the  consciousness  of  the 
modern  world  unless  you  have  certain  moral 
qualities  in  your  system  to  begin  with.  And  the 
severest  indictment  against  the  capitalistic 
system  is  on  moral  grounds.  We  must  all  admit 
that  certain  moral  qualities  have  been  developed 
and  strengthened  in  the  business  and  industrial 
world  by  the  capitalist  methods  of  management, 
that  we  have  developed  in  certain  aspects  mutual 
faith  and  trust  and  dependency.  We  have  de- 
veloped a  certain  amount  of  reliance  upon  men's 
words,  of  co-operation  up  to  a  certain  point  but 
over  against  that  you  have  to  put  other  factors. 
You  have  to  put  the  revelations  that  have  been 
made  in  court  after  court  and  to  commission 
after  commission  in  the  last  twenty-five  years  of 


44  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

the  extreme  corruption  in  the  order  of  the  present 
business  world,  due  to  all  kinds  of  graft,  due  to 
the  drive  of  the  profit  motive,  so  that  men  who 
would  be  perfectly  honest  man  to  man,  whose 
word  man  to  man  would  be  as  good  as  their  bond 
any  day  (and  that  is  a  social  gain  due  to  capi- 
talism), men  of  whom  that  could  be  said,  would 
yet  corrupt  their  fellow  men  and  plunder  the 
common  people  remorselessly.  Evidences  of  the 
corruption  of  departments  of  the  United  States 
government,  evidences  of  an  organised  plan 
subtly  to  control  Congress  and  the  courts,  evi- 
dence of  wholesale  attempts  to  disrupt  the  labour 
movement  by  bribery  and  corruption  —  these 
are  not  charges  but  proven  facts  that  lie  at  the 
door  of  capitalism  to-day. 

And  after  that,  its  reckless  waste  of  human 
life;  and  after  its  reckless  waste  of  human  life 
in  the  making  of  goods,  its  reckless  destruction 
of  the  moral  nature  of  man,  its  exhaustion  of  the 
spiritual  energies  of  whole  groups  of  men  by 
industry  carried  to  the  point  of  fatigue,  by  in- 
dustry failing  to  furnish  even  the  proper  means 
for  physical  nourishment  and  so  leaving  life 
depleted  and  almost  helpless!  You  have  only 
to  read  the  testimony  of  the  investigators  in 
Pittsburgh  and  other  steel  towns  to  see  what  the 
most  perfect  capitalistic  machine  has  done  in  the 


SOCIALISM  „  45 

waste  of  the  physical  and  moral  resources  of 
whole  groups  of  the  population., 

After  that  tale  has  been  told  there  lies  the 
other  story,  and  that  is  the  tale  of  the  stirring  of 
the  spirit  of  hatred  and  bitterness  and  passion 
and  resentment  that  comes  as  men  become  aware 
of  this  process.  And  you  simply  have  all  the 
hate  and  hell  of  war  transferred  from  militarism 
over  into  the  industrial  system  as  long  as  it  is 
run  by  capital  alone  for  the  gains  that  chiefly 
come  to  capital.  And  that  is  the  end  of  the 
story,  because  when  you  have  capitalism  in  its 
finest  form,  when  it  is  honest  and  pure  and  good 
it  still  leaves  an  unanswerable  moral  question  in 
the  consciousness  of  those  same  good  people. 
Head  what  Small  puts  into  the  lips  of  the  college 
girl  who  finds  herself  inheriting  a  great  fortune 
but  cannot  understand  what  moral  right  she  has 
to  it  and  how  she  shall  use  it  to  meet  the  question 
of  injustice  that  lies  in  her  mind.  That  question 
lies  at  the  very  heart  of  the  system  and  is  being 
faced  to-day  by  folks  who  are  beyond  reproach  in 
the  circles  of  capitalism. 

And  for  that  question  capitalism  itself  has  no 
answer.  I  took  up  my  morning  paper  and  I  read 
that  after  the  management  of  the  New  Haven 
Railroad  has  looted  New  England  to  the  limit, 
because  the  loot  has  been  distributed  into  inno- 


46  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

cent  hands,  nothing  can  be  done.  The  Commis- 
sion says  nothing  can  be  done  concerning  it  and 
the  papers  say  nothing  can  be  done  because  they 
approach  it  with  the  capitalistic  mind.  But 
when  you  approach  it  from  the  mind  which  does 
not  insist  upon  the  maintenance  of  the  capital- 
istic system  of  industry  you  ask  why  the  people 
who  have  got  the  major  part  of  the  loot  —  who 
have  got  the  money  that  innocent  investors  paid 
to  them  —  you  ask  why  they  cannot  be  reached 
and  the  unholy  tribute  returned  back  to  the  pub- 
lic again.  Of  course  if  New  England  is  going  to 
contribute  perpetually  a  tax  upon  the  life  and 
labour  of  its  people  to  the  estates  of  great  finan- 
ciers, why  nothing  can  be  done.  And  then  to 
justify  such  a  system  men  blasphemously  have 
talked  about  some  of  the  most  sacred  teachings 
of  the  Christian  religion,  being  quite  willing  that 
others  should  bear  the  burden  for  their  sins 
"perpetually. 

COLLECTIVE  OWNERSHIP 

Now  to  remedy  this  condition  Socialism  pro- 
poses collective  ownership.  The  later  Socialists 
admit  that  there  are  many  forms  of  industry 
which  must  still  remain  in  private  hands  for  a 
long  time  to  come.  If  you  ask  what  it  means 
that  the  people  should  collectively  own  and 
administer  those  things  upon  which  the  people 


SOCIALISM  47 

depend,  they  will  tell  you  it  means  taking  over 
immediately  the  means  of  transportation  and 
communication  and  then  some  of  the  great 
monopolies.  They  are  willing  to  leave  the  rest 
to  natural  and  lawful  social  development.  They 
insist  that  we  face  a  great  world-wide  movement 
here  that  never  reverses  itself,  that  we  continue 
to  extend  our  collective  administration  all  over 
the  country,  to  the  taking  over  of  the  Alaskan 
railways  and  mines.  The  point  is  not  to  worry 
about  where  to  stop  but  to  seize  upon  the  next 
step,  according  to  your  modern  philosopher- 
Socialist. 

Is  that  a  panacea?  Will  it  do  what  Socialism 
wants  done?  Will  it  restore  to  the  people  the 
whole  product  of  their  labour?  Will  not  simple 
collectivism  be  merely  another  form  of  capital- 
ism, with  labour  required  to  produce  the  un- 
earned increment  for  those  who  hold  the  underly- 
ing securities?  Will  it  relieve  the  moral  aspect 
of  the  situation  or  are  we  face  to  face  here  with 
something  that  is  deeper  than  any  form  of  indus- 
trial organisation,  that  lies  rather  in  human 
nature  than  in  any  principle  of  social  organisa- 
tion? Are  we  face  to  face  here  with  something 
which  cannot  be  met  by  any  change  in  the  social 
organisation?  You  might  have  state  capitalism, 
or  even  the  absolute  co-operative  ownership  of 
the  means  of  life  with  all  the  results  of  the  com- 


48  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

mon  labour  accruing  to  the  people,  and  if  the 
motive  was  simply  production  of  goods  your 
moral  distress  would  be  just  the  same  as  now,  be- 
cause your  fundamental  principle  would  not  have 
been  changed.  The  fundamental  evil  is  taking 
and  using  and  producing  goods  for  the  mere  sake 
of  material  gain  and  material  pleasure,  and 
unless  you  can  eliminate  that  you  simply  face 
moral  disaster  under  any  system  that  the  world 
can  devise.  Organise  collectively  and  co-oper- 
atively and  you  put  the  balance  on  the  side  of 
labour's  ideal,  but  you  do  not  automatically 
secure  it.  You  simply  put  the  weight  on  the  side 
of  man's  idealism,  on  the  side  of  his  spiritual 
nature.  You  cannot  automatically  produce  the 
great  ideals  men  have  longed  for  through  all  the 
ages. 

In  addition  to  collective  ownership  you  need 
two  other  things.  The  first  is,  a  spiritual  con- 
ception—  an  idealistic  conception  —  of  prop- 
erty, so  that  property  shall  be  seen  to  be  sacred, 
not  because  somebody  happens  to  own  it  and 
their  right  must  be  protected,  but  because  on  the 
one  hand  it  embodies  the  great  energies  of  man 
and  the  great  energies  of  the  Divine  which  have 
gone  into  its  production,  and  because  on  the 
other  hand  it  can  contribute  to  the  highest 
development  of  man  and  be  made  the  servant  of 
his  spiritual  capacities.  Along  with  that  you 


SOCIALISM  49 

must  have  the  spirit  and  ideal  of  service  so  that 
men  will  bend  their  necks  beneath  the  yoke  of 
toil,  the  common  burden  of  the  world's  work, 
neither  for  their  own  honour  nor  comfort,  but 
will  perform  their  due  part  in  the  work  of  the 
world  as  servants  of  the  common  good.  Without 
that  spirit  of  service,  without  that  devotion  to 
the  ideal  which  belongs  to  the  artists  and  to  the 
prophets  and  to  the  martyrs,  and  which  now 
becomes  the  sacred  right  and  the  divine  heritage 
of  the  common  toilers,  without  that  your  co- 
operative commonwealth  will  be  a  vain  delusion. 
But  with  that  your  co-operative  commonwealth 
is  identical  with  the  Kingdom  of  God  which 
Jesus  taught. 


50  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

Q.  In  the  interim  of  the  socialistic  ideal  what 
would  the  speaker  do  if  he  were  left  a  million 
dollars? 

A.  I  would  try  to  rid  myself  of  the  incum- 
brance  as  quickly  as  possible,  but  I  would  do  it, 
as  one  of  our  American  millionaires  said,  to  the 
best  of  my  judgment  to  destroy  the  system  under 
which  it  was  made. 

Q.  In  what  way  does  the  programme  of 
modern  Socialism  differ  from  the  Marxian  pro- 
gramme? 

A.  The  modern  Socialist  is  much  more  of  a 
philosopher  than  Marx  was.  Taking  him  in  the 
group  he  is  not  so  much  of  a  materialist  or  fatal- 
ist. He  believes  much  more  than  Marx  did  in 
the  conscious  working  out  of  the  social  goal. 

Q.  You  said  you  must  separate  the  personal 
question  from  the  impersonal  one.  How  can 
there  be  a  moral  question  involved  if  the  per- 
sonal element  is  not  predominant? 

A.  There  are  group  moral  questions  in  which 
persons  are  involved  for  which  no  person  is  or 
can  be  alone  responsible.  He  is  responsible  for 
his  part  toward  the  changing  of  any  system  that 
he  regards  as  unethical,  and  that  is  as  far  as  his 
responsibility  goes,  and  you  cannot  hold  him  for 
not  breaking  away  from  a  condition  he  cannot 
control. 


SOCIALISM  51 

Q.  Why  do  not  those  who  claim  to  be  sympa- 
thetic to  Socialism  and  support  it  with  their 
money  come  out  plainly  and  say  they  are  Social- 
ists? 

A.  I  should  think  that  if  there  is  any  truth 
in  the  phrase,  "  Money  talks,"  that  is  what  they 
are  doing. 

Q.  Is  not  such  an  industry  as  the  Ford  a  good 
illustration  of  absolute  co-operation  along  So- 
cialist lines? 

A.  I  shall  deal  with  the  question  of  profit 
sharing  in  a  later  lecture. 

Q.  The  claim  is  made  that  Socialism  only  ap- 
peals to  manual  labour  and  not  to  intellectual. 
Is  this  so? 

A.  While  regretting  the  fact,  I  have  not  yet 
found  any  way  of  getting  intelligence  into  the 
heads  of  some  people.  It  simply  cannot  be  done. 
Socialism  has  never  made  that  distinction  which 
some  of  its  opponents  have  put  into  its  mouth. 
It  recognises  the  contribution  of  all  groups  of 
active  workers  toward  social  progress. 

Q.  Why  is  it  that  Christianity  is  monopolised 
by  capitalists,  at  least,  very  few  churches  oppose 
the  capitalistic  system. 

A.  Because  the  significance  of  Jesus'  teach- 
ing on  property  was  obscured  for  a  great  pro- 
portion of  Christians  by  Roman  and  Grecian 
influences  in  the  early  development  of  Christian- 


52  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

ity  and  turned  into  theological  and  doctrinal 
channels.  It  is  getting  out  of  them  now. 

Q.  Is  only  manual  labour  recognised  by  the  So- 
cialist? 

A.  The  Socialist  recognises  all  kinds  of  labour 
that  contributes  to  social  progress  and  social  de- 
velopment. 

Q.  Have  the  arguments  against  Socialism 
based  upon  religion  any  foundation? 

A.  There  have  been  individual  Socialists  who 
were  very  bitter  antagonists  of  organised  reli- 
gion. Aside  from  that  these  attacks  have  no 
logical  and  no  ethical  basis. 

Q.  Does  Socialism  tend  to  destroy  the  family? 

A.  That  is  another  of  those  ancient  lies  that 
still  linger.  The  only  basis  for  it  is  that  some  in- 
dividual Socialists  have  been  opposed  to  the  fam- 
ily in  its  present  form,  but  Socialism  as  a  whole 
makes  for  the  purification  and  freedom  of  the 
family. 

Q.  Under  Socialism  would  not  social  service 
be  more  efficient  and  more  in  keeping  than  under 
the  present  system  of  capitalism? 

A.  One  of  the  greatest  crimes  and  charges  that 
lie  at  the  door  of  the  present  industrial  system 
is  that  it  makes  men  worse  than  they  naturally 
would  be  because  they  are  compelled  to  produce 
dividends. 


SOCIALISM  53 

Q.  If  the  Socialists  would  have  the  govern- 
ment take  over  the  means  of  transportation  and 
communication  what  becomes  of  the  other  work- 
ers? 

A.  I  expect  they  would  want  to  get  their  turn 
as  soon  as  they  could. 

Q.  How  can  you  reconcile  the  doctrine  of  eco- 
nomic determinism  and  freedom  of  the  will? 

A.  Because  it  shows  man  where  to  apply  his 
spiritual  powers,  namely,  to  the  transformation 
of  the  economic  system. 

Q.  In  view  of  the  inefficiency  now  going  on  in 
some  public  departments  how  can  you  assure  us 
that  greater  efficiency  will  result  from  Social- 
ism? 

A.  We  shall  have  to  stand  some  inefficiency. 
That  is  part  of  the  price  of  progress.  I  would 
rather  have  some  kinds  of  inefficiency  than  oth- 
ers, and  I  would  rather  have  my  mail  a  little 
late  and  know  that  no  mail  carrier  is  working 
over  time.  As  we  gain  in  social  capacity  ineffi- 
ciency disappears. 

Q.  Instead  of  taking  over  only  the  means  of 
transportation  and  communication  would  not  it 
be  just  as  easy  to  take  over  everything?  In  other 
words  would  it  not  be  just  as  easy  to  take  a  whole 
loaf  as  half? 

A.  It  is  just  as  easy  to  stand  for  a  great  deal 


54  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

more,  but  the  point  is  you  can  practically  pro- 
ceed only  in  one  way,  and  that  is  gain  your  social 
efficiency  as  you  go  along. 

Q.  Will  you  give  the  names  of  one  or  two  of 
the  best  books  on  the  subject  of  labour? 

A.  "American  Trade  Unions,"  by  Marot ;  "His- 
tory and  Problems  of  Organised  Labor,"  by  Carle- 
ton,  a  sympathetic  study  from  the  outside. 

Q.  Will  you  please  give  the  names  of  some 
books  on  Socialism? 

A.  "  History  of  Socialism,"  the  revised  edition ; 
"  Facts  of  Socialism,"  by  Hughan,  and  the 
"  Spiritual  Significance  of  Socialism,"  by  Spargo. 


III.  SYNDICALISM 

THE  latest  development  in  the  labour  movement 
is  Syndicalism.  It  comes  from  France,  that  su- 
preme mother  of  revolutions.  In  France  it  ap- 
pears to  have  spent  its  force.  It  is  still  strong 
in  the  other  Latin  countries  of  Europe,  perhaps 
because  of  the  temperament  of  the  people  and 
perhaps  because  of  the  backward  state  of  indus- 
try in  those  countries.  The  name  originally 
meant  nothing  more  than  trade  unionism,  but 
recently,  in  the  last  twenty  years,  it  has  come 
to  mean  revolutionary  unionism.  One  of  its  So- 
cialist critics  says  that  it  comprises  Socialist 
philososphy,  united  with  anarchistic  ideals  and 
trade  union  weapons. 

Syndicalism  proposes  to  solidify  the  workers 
by  industries,  and  to  use  all  the  weapons  of 
trade  unions  to  the  utmost  to  accomplish  an  end 
which  trade  unions  do  not  seek  to  accomplish  — 
the  transformation  of  the  present  industrial  sys- 
tem and  also  of  the  present  organisation  of  so- 
ciety. So  far  it  agrees  with  socialism.  But  it 
parts  company  with  socialism  because  it  dis- 
trusts and  disavows  political  methods,  and  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  political  state,  pro- 

55 


56  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

posing  to  act  purely  in  the  economic  field  and  to 
accomplish  an  industrial  in  the  place  of  a  po- 
litical state. 

It  has  developed  a  philosophy.  On  the  prac- 
tical side  it  is  the  refuge  of  those  who  have  be- 
come disappointed  and  disillusioned,  both  in  the 
Trade  Union  Movement  and  in  the  Socialist 
party.  But  it  has  gathered  around  it  in  Eu- 
rope, a  group  of  intellectuals  who  have  expressed 
its  point  of  view  in  a  philosophy  —  the  philoso- 
phy of  pure  intuition  —  claiming  not  a  little 
support  from  Bergson,  and  teaching  the  work- 
ing class  to  distrust  the  intellectuals,  believing 
that  the  intuitions  and  desires  of  the  workers 
themselves  will  lead  to  a  much  more  effective  pro- 
gramme than  the  plans  of  the  theories  of  the 
thinkers.  It  claims,  in  the  mouth  of  this  group 
of  philosophers,  to  be  something  more  than  a 
philosophy,  to  be  a  religion,  because  of  the  ex- 
tent to  which  it  masses  together  large  numbers 
of  men  behind  the  ideal  of  a  better  and  a  higher 
life,  and  unites  them  behind  that  ideal  with  a 
passion  for  service  to  the  extent  of  sacrifice. 

INDUSTRIAL   UNIONISM 

Now  before  considering  the  American  form  of 
Syndicalism,  it  ought  to  be  noted  that  there  is 
a  tendency  in  that  direction  inside  the  Ameri- 
can Federation  of  Labor  in  this  country.  That 


SYNDICALISM  57 

tendency  goes  under  the  head  of  Industrial  Un- 
ionism, which  is  the  organisation  of  the  workers 
around  the  product  instead  of  around  the  tool, 
following  not  craft  lines  but  following  the  di- 
visions which  capital  has  made  in  the  modern 
industrial  process.  To  organise  the  workers  by 
the  industry  instead  of  by  the  trade  or  the  craft, 
would  oppose  to  the  concentration  of  capital  the 
concentration  of  labour.  It  would  avoid  the 
weakening  effect  of  jurisdictional  disputes,  which 
leaves  labour  fighting  against  itself  in  certain  in- 
dustries in  times  of  strike,  which  not  only  dis- 
gusts the  general  public  but  which  also  weakens 
craft  unionism.  In  some  trades,  there  are  rival 
organisations,  each  claiming  to  dominate  the 
workers. 

Industrial  Unionism,  however,  has  not  always 
succeeded  in  avoiding  jurisdictional  disputes. 
Indeed,  it  has  developed  quite  a  few  in  organised 
labour.  The  two  great  groups  organised  indus- 
trially are  the  miners  and  the  brewery  workers. 
One  of  the  latest  jurisdictional  fights  arose  out 
of  the  fact  that  owing  to  the  success  of  the  pro- 
hibition movement  some  of  the  breweries  have 
gone  into  the  business  of  producing  mineral 
waters,  and  the  brewery  workers'  union  claimed 
jurisdiction  over  the  men  driving  the  mineral 
water  wagons.  This  claim  led  to  a  conflict  with 
the  union  of  another  trade,  and  incidentally 


58  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

raised  the  question.  "  When  is  a  brewery  not  a 
brewery?  " 

Besides,  these  industrial  unions  have  an 
anarchistic  tendency  in  the  labour  world  because 
they  have  a  frankly  revolutionary  aim  and  pur- 
pose; that  is,  they  are  not  content  to  modify  the 
existing  system,  but  propose  to  transform  it, — 
of  course  by  political  means,  not  by  weapons  and 
violence.  That  is  very  clear,  both  with  the 
brewery  workers  and  the  miners.  The  preamble 
to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  Mine  Workers 
sets  forth  that  their  goal  is  to  secure  for  the 
workers  the  full  social  value  of  their  product. 

While  they  have  this  tendency,  however,  the 
industrial  unions  part  company  with  the  Syndi- 
calists because  they  trust  to  political  means. 
They  are  allied  with  the  socialist  group  rather 
than  with  the  group  of  the  industrial  workers 
organised  for  direct  industrial  action. 

This  group  of  industrial  unionists  has  ex- 
tended itself,  and  has  influenced  labour  in  other 
directions.  In  order  to  meet  the  demand  the 
A.  F.  of  L.  has  created  departments,  with  the 
effort  to  amalgamate  groups  of  trades.  Concen- 
tration of  trades  has  developed  within  those 
departments  —  in  the  metal  trades  it  has  pro- 
ceeded to  a  very  marked  degree.  There  have 
been  efforts  made  also  in  the  direction  of  feder- 
ation of  unions,  a  most  noted  example  being  in 


SYNDICALISM  59 

the  railroad  workers,  where  we  have  a  federation 
of  all  mechanical  workers  to  meet  the  federation 
of  the  lines  themselves.  It  has  also  been  pro- 
posed and  sanctioned  that  there  should  be  a 
federation  of  federations  so  as  to  meet  the  con- 
centrated management  of  the  railroads  with  the 
concentrated  organisation  of  all  the  workers. 
This  was  attempted  once  before  in  this  country, 
in  1894. 

These  tendencies  within  the  American  Feder- 
ation of  Labor  all  indicate  that  the  type  of  labour 
union  for  the  future  will  be  the  industrial  type. 
There  are  two  great  forces  working  in  that  direc- 
tion; one,  the  improvement  of  machinery  which 
makes  labour  increasingly  automatic  and  wipes  t/ 
out  the  old  craftsman  and  therefore  removes  the 
necessity  for  the  craft  union ;  the  other  being  the 
increased  concentration  of  capital,  and  of  the 
management  of  industry,  which  forces  increasing 
solidarity  of  labour. 

THE  i.  w.  w. 

The  American  expression  of  Syndicalism  is  the 
I.  W.  W.,  that  feared,  hated,  misunderstood,  mis- 
represented, and  outlawed  organisation.  It  is 
the  stormy  petrel  of  the  American  labour  move- 
ment. Wherever  there  is  any  kind  of  a  fight  to 
be  waged  in  behalf  of  the  folks  at  the  bottom,  the 
I.  W.  W.  is  more  than  willing  to  wage  it.  When- 


60  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

ever  there  are  heads  to  be  broken,  its  heads  are 
cheerfully  and  gallantly  offered.  It  has  to  en- 
dure to-day  the  same  kind  of  obliquy,  the  same 
misrepresentation  that  attended  trade  unionism 
in  its  early  days,  and  socialism  in  its  beginning. 

There  is  evidence  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt 
that  Syndicalism  in  Europe  was  started  by  the 
group  of  militant  anarchists  in  France,  who 
were  persecuted  by  the  police  and  mercilessly 
hunted  down,  they  attempted  in  vain  to  estab- 
lish relations  with  the  socialist  groups.  Finding 
there  was  no  possibility  of  opening  up  again  that 
long  warfare  which  had  been  waging  in  Europe 
between  socialists  and  anarchists,  they  turned  to 
the  trade  unions  for  refuge.  They  went  into 
them  and  captured  a  section  of  them  with  their 
policies  and  their  programme.  In  comparison 
with  that,  in  this  country  the  most  militant  and 
successful  leader  of  the  I.  W.  W.  came  out  of  that 
early  strike  in  Colorado,  19034,  when  certain 
corporations  appropriated  for  their  own  use  both 
the  civil  and  the  military  powers  of  the  State, 
when  their  agents  over-ruled  the  courts  by  force, 
and  publicly  consigned  the  Constitution  to  hell. 

There  are  a  lot  of  people  interested  in  this 
country  in  repressing  the  I.  W.  W.  They 
ought  to  note  this  fact,  that  the  growth  of 
the  I.  W.  W.  proceeds  in  direct  ratio  to  the  policy 
of  repression.  Whenever  trade  union  organisa- 


SYNDICALISM  61 

tion  is  denied  by  capital,  the  next  move  of  labour 
is  to  seek  political  expression.  Whenever  trade 
union  activity  is  limited  there  you  will  find 
socialism  increasing  its  vote.  Where  political 
activity  is  not  entered  into,  where  it  is  checked 
or  repressed,  or  wherever  working  folks  are  not 
naturalised,  there  you  find  industrial  activity 
growing  by  leaps  and  bounds.  Those  folks  who 
are  trying  to  hold  back  the  flood  of  discontent, 
might  well  remember  what  has  happened  in  the 
past  to  those  who  attempted  to  do  that  thing  by 
the  mere  policy  of  repression.  They  might,  as 
they  look  around  them,  remember  also  what 
happens  to  people  who  try  to  sit  too  long  on  a 
safety  valve. 

The  I.  W.  W.  claims  a  membership  of  120,000 
members;  it  had  a  paid-up  membership  in  1913 
of  about  30,000.  It  proposes  to  organise  the 
workers  into  one  big  union  with  certain  national 
departments;  operating  in  three  fields  at 
present, —  textile  workers,  forest  and  lumber 
workers,  marine  and  transportation  workers. 
It  has  about  ninety-five  local  unions  scattered 
around,  including  farm  workers  and  construc- 
tion hands.  It  operates  in  the  unskilled  immi- 
grant group  at  the  bottom,  and  in  the  group  of 
nomads  created  by  the  abnormal  conditions  of 
our  seasonal  trades.  Besides  this,  it  is  the  Cave 
of  Adullam  of  the  modern  working  world,  to 


62  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

which  gather  all  those  who  find  themselves  out- 
cast and  many  of  those  who  believe  themselves 
outlawed.  It  is  the  mouthpiece  of  discontent. 
It  gathers  to  itself  naturally  the  most  radical 
among  the  Socialists.  It  has  practically  cap- 
tured what  was  formerly  the  high-brow  Socialist 
magazine  of  this  country,  if  not  for  its  organisa- 
tion, at  least  for  a  pretty  broad  part  of  its  poli- 
cies and  its  programme. 

The  I.  W.  W.  has  a  four-fold  fight  on  its  hands 
and  whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  nature  of  its 
cause,  the  gallantry  of  its  struggle  against  odds 
is  worthy  of  a  moment's  admiration.  Not  con- 
tent with  finding  itself  arrayed  against  the  or- 
ganised forces  of  the  community,  not  content 
with  finding  itself  arrayed  against  the  law,  the 
pulpit  and  the  press,  it  has  forced  a  fight  in  the 
ranks  of  labour  itself.  For  in  the  beginning  it 
flung  down  the  gauntlet  before  both  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor  and  the  Socialist  Party. 
That  three-cornered  warfare  is  being  waged  with 
bitterness  and  vituperation  and  with  such  epi- 
thets and  invectives  as  would  do  credit  even  to 
theological  disputes. 

It  ought  to  be  said  in  passing,  however,  that 
the  strength  of  the  I.  W.  W.  cannot  be  deter- 
mined by  its  membership.  It  operates,  you 
notice,  among  a  group  of  workers  many  of  whom 
do  not  stay  in  one  place  very  long  and  do  not 


SYNDICALISM  63 

receive  very  much  of  an  income  and  therefore  do 
not  always  keep  their  cards  properly  paid  up. 
Its  strength  may  be  more  properly  determined  by 
the  number  of  enemies  it  has  made,  and  its 
strength  will  be  determined  in  the  long  run  not 
by  the  numbers  it  gathers  together  or  the  organ- 
ising value  of  its  ideals,  but  by  the  contribution 
it  will  leave  upon  the  labour  movement  of  the 
world  in  change  of  form  and  modification  of 
policy. 

The  I.  W.  W.  started  out  to  challenge  the  craft 
union  of  this  country.  In  Europe  that  chal- 
lenge was  not  so  direct.  There  Syndicalism 
started  out  under  the  old  craft  union  but 
changed  it.  Here  in  America  it  proclaimed  that 
craft  organisation  spelled  for  the  worker  divi- 
sion, defeat,  and  degeneration.  Here  it  was  a 
direct  warfare.  The  preamble  to  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  I.  W.  W.  points  out  three  defects  in 
the  kind  of  union  promoted  by  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor :  ( 1 ) ,  that  it  does  not  offer 
effective  resistance  to  the  solidarity  of  capital; 
(2),  it  weakens  labour  by  internal  warfare  be- 
cause often  in  the  ordinary  strike  and  always 
in  the  jurisdictional  strike  labour  finds  itself 
fighting  against  itself;  (3),  it  teaches  the 
worker  that  the  interest  of  the  worker  and  the 
capitalist  are  identical  and  so  leads  the  worker 
into  submission. 


64  TJIE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

To  remedy  the  first  two  defects  the  I.  W.  W. 
propose  to  solidify  all  labour.  They  propose  to 
hold  the  workers  together  by  industries  accord- 
ing to  the  product  turned  out  and  the  work  done. 
They  propose  to  unite  these  groups  in  various 
industries  in  one  big  union  with  low  fees  to 
which  all  shall  be  welcome.  And  this  great  note 
of  solidarity  is  the  dominant  note  with  which 
the  industrial  union  proposes  to  replace  the  craft 
union.  Here  we  have  a  note  that  needs  to  be 
heard.  It  is  distinctly  a  voice  for  the  group 
that  is  down  below  the  skilled  craft  organisation 
with  its  benefits,  down  below  the  possibility  of 
political  action.  The  I.  W.  W.  is  the  friend  and 
the  champion  of  the  unskilled  immigrant,  the 
outcast  and  the  outlaw,  and  if  it  has  done  noth- 
ing else  it  is  at  least  performing  a  valuable  social 
service  in  making  the  rest  of  us  see  the  needs 
and  conditions  of  this  group  at  the  bottom.  In 
becoming  the  mouthpiece  for  them,  that  they 
may  let  the  world  know  the  conditions  under 
which  they  work  and  live,  obviously  the  only 
answer  which  any  intelligent  and  just  com- 
munity can  make  to  an  attempt  to  repress  the 
voice  from  the  bottom,  is  to  insist  that  that  voice 
must  be  heard  no  matter  what  the  terms  of  its 
speech,  because  only  so  can  we  find  out  what  the 
facts  are  and  what  action  to  take  in  order  to 
meet  injustice  if  it  exists. 


SYNDICALISM  65 

Of  course  the  ideal  of  solidarity  is  one  of  the 
great  moving  ideals  of  the  race,  one  of  the  ideals 
which  becomes  a  great  force  in  the  driving  up- 
ward and  onward  of  humanity,  and  I  must  con- 
fess that  in  the  presence  of  that  ideal  I  feel  some- 
thing of  admiration  of  those  folks  at  the  bottom 
who,  in  the  face  of  all  the  forces  that  are  driving 
them  apart,  still  would  come  together  and  hold 
up  before  the  world  one  of  the  greatest  ideals 
that  the  human  mind  has  ever  conceived.  Those 
of  us  here  who  have  been  schooled  at  the  feet  of 
the  Carpenter  will  recognise  at  once  that  this 
ideal  of  the  solidarity  of  the  human  race  is  our 
ideal,  and  that  some  practical  expression  must 
be  found  for  it,  not  merely  in  sentiment,  not 
merely  in  emotion,  but  in  the  actual  working 
world.  I  must  confess  to  being  moved  at  one  lit- 
tle thing  that  occurred  out  here  at  the  Lawrence 
strike  beyond  anything  else  that  happened  there. 
It  was  the  group  of  immigrant  women  of  many 
diverse  nationalities,  sitting  around  the  common 
table  to  peel  the  potatoes  for  the  common  meal, 
and  singing,  in  their  varied  tongues,  as  they  did 
this  necessary  work,  the  great  hymn  of  the  work- 
ing class  of  the  world,  with  that  chorus : 

"  'Tis  the  last  great  conflict, 

Let  each  stand  in  his  place, 
The  Industrial  Union 

(or  the  Brotherhood  in  the  Workers,  or 


66  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

the  Brotherhood  of  men  —  some  of  the 
different  phrases  for  it) 
The  Brotherhood  of  the  Workers, 
Shall  be  the  human  race." 

Whatever  the  defects  of  the  organisation,  when 
it  can  take  the  people  of  narrow,  contracted,  igno- 
rant lives,  lift  them  up  out  of  that  narrowness, 
and  that  sordidness,  lift  them  up,  put  them  in 
touch  with  the  great  world  of  all  humanity,  and 
give  them  a  vision  and  an  ideal  like  that,  it  is 
performing  a  service  to  society  that  needs  to  be 
done. 

Now  when  you  come  to  the  other  part  of  the 
propaganda  of  the  I.  W.  W.  you  have  something 
very  different.  It  stands  out  in  clear  distinction 
from  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  by  its 
insistence  of  warfare  between  the  worker  and  the 
employer.  Its  declaration  of  independence  is  a 
declaration  of  war.  The  preamble  to  its  consti- 
tution says  the  working  class  and  the  employing 
class  have  nothing  in  common.  There  can  be 
no  peace  as  long  as  hunger  and  cold  are  found 
among  the  people.  A  few  classes  have  all  the 
good  things  of  life.  Between  these  two  classes 
struggle  must  go  on  until  the  workers  organise 
as  a  class,  take  possession  of  the  machinery  of 
production  and  abolish  the  wage  system.  It 
proposes  to  make  war  upon  the  enemy  wherever 
and  whenever  he  may  be  found.  It  will  strike 


SYNDICALISM  67 

whenever  it  can  to  advantage,  and  go  back  to 
work  and  strike  again,  whenever  by  striking  it 
will  gain  anything  for  the  working  class.  It 
will  write  no  contracts  with  the  employer  be- 
cause contracts  at  best  mean  a  compromise  and 
a  form  of  truce,  and  it  believes  in  unending  war- 
fare by  all  possible  methods  except  the  method  of 
open  violence.  It  declares  that  it  will  harass 
the  employer  by  all  possible  means  in  its  power 
in  order  to  make  gains  for  labour.  Here,  of 
course,  you  have  the  tactics  of  militarism,  and 
the  tactics  of  militarism  always  involve  the 
ethics  of  militarism ;  and  both  the  tactics  and  the 
ethics  of  militarism  involve  as  serious  conse- 
quences for  those  who  use  them  as  for  those 
against  whom  they  are  employed. 

This  frankly  revolutionary  note  in  the  I.  W. 
W.  propaganda  that  distinguishes  it  both  from 
trade  unionism  and  from  Socialism,  is  based 
upon  two  propositions  which  are  not  absolutely 
sound.  One  is  the  proposition  that  all  wealth 
belongs  to  the  workers;  because  they  made  it. 
That  of  course  depends  upon  how  large  is  your 
definition  of  the  worker.  What  we  have  here  is  a 
popular  teaching  of  Marx'  famous  doctrine,  that 
capital  contributes  nothing  to  the  production  of 
new  goods,  simply  passes  over  its  own  exchange 
value.  But  the  fallacy  that  lurks  there,  and  is 
now  being  propagated  all  over  this  country,  is  the 


68  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

failure  to  observe  the  difference  between  capital 
and  the  capitalists.  The  capitalist  when  he  par- 
ticipates in  the  process  of  production,  does  con- 
tribute something  to  it.  And  therefore  the 
wealth  created  in  the  world  is  not  all  created  by 
folks  working  for  wages.  If  you  are  going  to 
predicate  your  tactics  on  the  basis  of  fallacies, 
your  tactics  of  course,  will  be  fundamentally  un- 
just. 

The  next  fundamental  fallacy  here,  or  half- 
truth,  is  in  the  proposition  that  the  working  class 
and  the  employing  class  have  nothing  in  com- 
mon. It  may  be  quite  true  that  there  is  an  eco- 
nomic fallacy  underlying  the  proposition  of  the 
trade  union  that  there  is  an  identity  of  interest 
between  the  employing  class  and  the  employed, 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  they  have  nothing  in 
common.  There  is  a  clear  failure  here  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  employer  as  an  individual 
and  the  employer  as  a  social  institution  in  the 
capitalist  system.  If  you  are  talking  imper- 
sonally about  employers,  about  capitalists  as  a 
social  institution,  it  is  of  course  a  sound  economic 
idea  that  there  is  absolute  antagonism  of  interest 
between  that  impersonal  employing  group  and 
the  wage  earning  group,  because  one's  economic 
interest  is  to  increase  goods  and  profit  and  to 
reduce  labour  cost,  and  the  other's  economic 
interest  is  to  push  up  labour  cost  by  every  means 


SYNDICALISM  69 

in  its  power,  and  you  have  a  fundamental  conflict 
there.     But  when  you  are  talking  about  individ- 
ual employers  and  individual  wage  earners  they  \ 
have  a  great  many  things  in  common. 

They  have  not  an  ultimate  common  interest 
but  they  have  a  very  large  common  interest  in 
the  present  order  of  things.  They  have  the 
common  interest  to  make  the  present  order 'of 
things  as  socially  efficient  as  it  can  be  made, 
pending  a  time  when  it  can  be  changed.  I  do 
not  concede  that  there  is  any  absolute  conflict 
of  ideas  here.  I  believe  it  is  practically  sound 
that  the  present  order  of  things  can  be  made  as 
socially  efficient  as  possible  without  relinquish- 
ing any  desire  to  make  a  fundamental  change 
in  the  existing  order  of  things.  It  appears  to  be 
a  social  hope  of  honest  men,  men  socially  minded, 
to  make  the  present  machinery  do  the  best  work 
it  is  capable  of  doing  while  they  are  getting 
ready  to  make  new  machinery  to  take  its  place. 
Both  the  employer  and  employed  have  this  in 
common, —  both  are  suffering  from  a  common 
imperfect  system;  both  are  suffering  from  the 
same  evil.  When  any  group  of  men  of  either 
section  recognise  that  fact  and  are  willing  in  all 
sincerity  to  take  hold  and  try  to  remove  the 
common  evil,  there  is  at  once  a  common  interest 
between  that  group  of  employers  and  employed, 
enduring  so  long  as  they  work  together  for  the 


70  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

time  when  the  present  economic  antagonism  will 
be  removed.  This  antagonism  is  a  fact  pressing 
hard  upon  all  of  us.  We  are  all  suffering  from 
it  in  every  walk  of  life  —  not  simply  the  capital- 
ist and  the  labourer,  but  the  intelligent  work- 
ers. And  the  day  of  redemption  for  us,  the  day 
of  release,  will  be  postponed  by  any  propaganda 
making  for  hatred  between  man  and  man.  The 
full  answer  to  a  declaration  of  war  against  indi- 
viduals is  the  increase  of  class  warfare.  It 
must  also  be  remembered  that  war  is  never 
stopped  when  one  or  the  other  side  wins  an  abso- 
lute victory.  This  is  not  a  victory,  for  nothing 
was  ever  settled  in  that  way  yet.  It  will  have  to 
be  waged  all  over  again. 

The  only  possible  way  to  find  a  day  of  release 
from  the  common  evils  that  are  oppressing  all  of 
us  is  to  get  the  most  of  us  together  in  the  common 
cause,  to  get  the  great  mass  of  workers  and  the 
more  prominent  members  of  society  to  join  hands 
to  remove  the  common  imperfect  system  and  the 
common  immorality  in  our  social  organisation. 

DIRECT  ACTION 

Labour's  tactics  in  this  Syndicalist  warfare, 
in  which  it  differs  from  Socialism,  is  "  direct 
action."  Here  it  breaks  with  Socialism ;  it  says 
nothing  of  political  action ;  it  will  have  nothing 
to  do  with  legislation.  This  it  declares  to  be  a 


SYNDICALISM  71 

delusion;  it  leaves  the  worker  distracted  —  he 
doesn't  act.  It  wants  direct  action  on  his  part 
in  the  economic  field,  instead  of  action  through 
political  means.  Political  action  is  diplomacy; 
direct  action  is  war. 

The  term  "  direct  action"  can  be  applied 
legitimately  to  labour  action  in  the  industrial 
and  economic  field  as  against  political  action. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  it  comes  to  mean  the  radical 
tactics  employed  by  the  Syndicalists  in  Europe 
and  the  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World  in  this 
country.  Those  tactics  may  be  summarised 
thus : 

(1)  General  Strike. 

(2)  Sabotage. 

The  General  Strike  is  advocated  to  bring 
about  a  condition  in  which  society  being  par- 
alysed, the  industrial  workers  will  have  to  come 
to  its  rescue.  In  preparation  for  the  general 
strike  all  sorts  of  small  strikes  can  be  encour- 
aged, and  while  the  general  strike  does  not  in- 
volve violence,  some  syndicalist  leaders  have 
thought  that  it  may  be  a  good  thing  to  advocate 
violence  in  the  small  strikes.  What  we  have 
here  is  the  re-appearance  of  an  old  ideal  that  has 
been  seen  time  and  time  again  in  the  labouring 
and  industrial  world.  The  writings  of  Syndi- 
calists in  Europe  indicate  that  the  general  strike 


72  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

is  not  so  much  a  practical  thing  as  a  "  myth." 
Sovel,  the  French  leader,  declares  that  there  are 
from  time  to  time  certain  pert  ideas  and  ideals, 
or  "  myths  "  which  are  sources  of  social  progress. 
When  you  come  to  actual  development  these 
myths  have  no  full  realisation  in  practical  action. 
They  do  their  work  in  firing  the  passions  of  men. 
The  trouble  is  that  this  sort  of  idea  is  likely  to 
remain  but  a  myth  when  you  dome  to  try  it  out. 
In  the  first  place  no  general  strike  on  the  part  of 
the  industrial  workers  would  paralyse  industry. 
There  is  something  more  to  be  reckoned  with 
than  the  manufacturing  process.  There  is  the 
great  farming  process  from  which  food  must 
come;  there  is  the  great  credit  system  on  which 
the  modern  world  depends.  The  general  strike 
must  include  the  whole  to  be  successful. 

If  it  can  be  accomplished  without  violence, 
which  is  an  extremely  unlikely  thing,  you  would 
simply  have  transferred  the  ownership  of  indus- 
trial property  from  one  class  to  another.  You 
would  not  have  settled  the  fundamental  root  of 
the  difficulty,  which  is  the  social  institution  of 
property.  That  is  the  root  of  the  whole  indus- 
trial question,  and  that  cannot  be  settled  by  one 
group.  It  can  only  be  settled  by  a  com- 
mon agreement  on  the  part  of  the  people  as  a 
whole. 


SYNDICALISM  73 

SABOTAGE 

Sabotage  means  the  carrying  out  of  "direct 
action  "  by  interference  with  the  industrial  pro- 
cess. It  comes  from  a  French  word  meaning 
work  clumsily  done.  The  first  appearance  of  it 
in  a  general  policy  was  following  a  strike  in 
Scotland,  where  some  dock  labourers  struck  for 
shorter  hours  and  higher  wages.  The  strike  was 
defeated  by  the  introduction  of  farm  labourers 
as  strike  breakers.  After  the  men  went  back  to 
work  in  their  old  places  the  leaders  got  them 
together  and  said :  "  You  can  do  your  work  as 
poorly  as  those  fellows  who  took  your  places." 
They  went  back  to  work  to  shirk  their  jobs  and 
in  a  little  while  they  got  their  increased  pay  on 
condition  of  doing  better  work. 

The  primary  form  of  sabotage  is  this :  instead 
of  giving  a  good  piece  of  work  for  a  poor  day's 
pay,  its  advocates  said,  "We  will  give  a  poor 
day's  work  in  return  for  a  poor  day's  pay."  The 
French  have  resolved  this  into  a  philosophy  of 
sabotage,  with  such  refinements  as  are  typical  of 
the  French  mind.  They  have  developed  many 
curious  forms  of  sabotage :  carrying  out  literally 
the  multitude  of  orders  on  a  railroad  and  so  con- 
fusing traffic ;  changing  the  labels  on  freight ;  the 
strike  of  the  open  mouth, —  by  telling  customers 
the  actual  facts  about  the  goods  they  are  about 


74  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

to  purchase,  and  last  of  all,  the  Malthusian 
strike  to  limit  the  birthrate  and  lessen  the  supply 
of  industrial  workers.  In  this  country  the  advo- 
cates of  sabotage  state  that  it  means  any  inter- 
ference with  industry  with  the  purpose  of  limit- 
ing output,  or  injuring  the  employer  for  the 
benefit  of  the  worker,  provided  no  other  means 
are  available.  Violence  is  not  countenanced 
or  taught  by  advocates  of  sabotage.  They 
are  more  interested  in  getting  ready  the  minds 
of  the  workers  in  preparation  of  the  general 
strike  than  in  the  actual  process  of  industry. 
They  recognise  it  is  a  dangerous  weapon  to  use, 
dangerous  in  more  ways  than  one.  Socialists 
have  disavowed  it.  In  this  country  they  have 
adopted  a  resolution  that  any  member  teaching 
sabotage  or  any  form  of  crime  as  a  means  for 
the  emancipation  of  the  working  class,  shall  be 
expelled.  This  has  been  adopted  not  on  grounds 
of  the  consequences  to  capital,  but  on  grounds  of 
the  consequences  to  labour,  because  the  history  of 
labour  shows  that  the  use  of  that  weapon  —  and 
it  is  an  old  weapon  —  being  double-edged,  hurts 
labour  just  as  much  as  it  does  capital;  that  it 
brings  distrust,  breaks  down  morality,  breaks 
down  solidarity,  and  comes  even  to  be  used 
within  labour  circles  for  personal  and  factional 
ends.  It  is  on  these  grounds  that  the  Socialist 
groups  have  disavowed  it.  The  most  prominent 


SYNDICALISM  75 

American  Syndicalist  was  recently  recalled  from 
membership  in  the  Socialist  National  Committee 
for  advocating  sabotage. 

Some  Syndicalist  leaders  attempt  to  establish 
the  ethical  validity  of  sabotage.  They  are  not 
restrained  by  the  ethics  that  cling  around  private 
property  for  its  protection.  You  remember  that 
there  was  some  sabotage  in  Boston  Harbor  some 
time  ago  and  the  ethical  question  depends  on 
whose  ox  is  being  gored.  The  thesis  is  that  when 
the  industrial  worker  does  an  act  which  may  be 
destructive  for  the  sake  of  the  social  good,  it  is 
not  necessarily  harmful.  That  is  your  old 
familiar  doctrine  that  the  end  justifies  the 
means;  it  is  the  old  familiar  doctrine  of  doing 
evil  that  good  may  come  of  it,  and  history  has 
proved  that  those  who  use  a  means  which  they 
question  to  accomplish  an  end,  in  the  long  run 
defeat  their  own  end  and  absolutely  destroy  their 
own  capacity  for  reaching  that  end. 

Syndicalism  gives  us  this  gain.  It  attempts 
to  put  before  us  the  great  ideal  of  solidarity  and 
shows  us  the  necessity  for  it.  It  says  that  a 
state  in  which  political  bureaucracy  was  set  over 
industry  would  be  intolerable  and  insufferable, 
and  it  does  rightly  call  our  attention  to  the 
necessity  of  some  simpler  form  of  social  organ- 
isation and  control  in  the  industrial  field.  But 
in  its  tactics  it  defeats  itself  and  it  seeks  what  is 


76  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

impossible  in  social  progress,  a  short  cut  to  an 
ideal  which  all  just  men  will  recognise  as  one 
of  the  great  and  desirable  ideals  of  the  race. 

If  men  are  going  to  do  what  Syndicalism  says 
it  is  doing,  or  wants  to  do, —  prepare  workers  in 
the  industrial  field  to  be  able  to  take  their  part 
in  the  development  of  the  race,  prepare  the  new 
society  (and  even  the  Socialists  admit  that  much 
education  remains  to  be  done  before  wide- 
spread collectivism  is  possible)  then  what  they 
have  to  do  is  not  to  teach  warfare,  not  to  develop 
anarchistic  methods  which  will  disturb  the  labour 
process ;  what  they  have  to  do  is  to  develop  social 
efficiency  on  the  part  of  the  group  at  the  bottom 
of  society,  and  that  is  a  task  which  the  whole 
community  must  face  in  answer  to  this  challenge 
from  the  industrial  group  at  the  bottom. 


SYNDICALISM  77 


Q.  Is  the  solidarity  ideal  of  the  I.  W.  W.  a  pro- 
duct of  necessity  or  of  free  choice? 

A.  It  is  a  combination  of  both.  The  concen- 
tration of  modern  industry  and  the  organisation 
of  the  skilled  workers,  have  both  been  pressing 
upon  the  group  at  the  bottom ;  but  it  is  more  than 
that,  it  is  the  stirring  up  of  an  ideal  in  human 
history.  This  is  one  of  the  modern  expressions 
of  it, 

Q.  What  method  might  be  used  in  the  case  of 
the  industrial  organisation  to  get  results  in  re- 
gard to  individual  efficiency  of  the  worker  which 
is  not  now  set  them  by  trade  unions? 

A.  In  my  observation  of  many  forms  of  work, 
the  most  effective  procedure  to  secure  the  largest 
amount  of  efficiency  on  the  part  of  the  individual 
worker,  is  to  enable  him  to  get  the  results  of  his 
work. 

Q.  Does  not  philosophic  anarchism  seek  to 
develop  the  individual,  physically,  morally,  spir- 
itually and  mentally? 

A.  That  is  undoubtedly  its  purpose  and  its 
plan.  The  question  remains  whether  its  end  can 
be  accomplished  without  a  very  large  degree  of 
community  action  to  the  same  end. 

Q.  What  is  the  difference  between  the  Chicago 
branch  of  the  I.  W.  W.  and  the  Detroit  faction? 

A.  The  Detroit  faction  believes  in  more  con- 


78  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

servative  methods  and  in  political  action  while 
the  Chicago  faction  believes  in  radical  methods 
in  the  industrial  field.  Of  course  the  Detroit 
faction  is  the  much  smaller  group. 

Q.  If  open  warfare  or  sabotage  is  not  accept- 
able to  Christian  ethics  what  would  you  advocate 
for  the  unskilled  worker  who  belongs  to  the  I. 
W.  W.  if  he  did  not  get  enough  wages?  What 
would  you  advise  him  to  do? 

A.  I  do  not  see  that  he  betters  his  position 
materially  by  sabotage.  I  do  not  see  that  he  is 
able  effectively  to  strike  while  on  the  job;  his 
only  weapon  that  is  effective  now  is  that  of  the 
actual  strike. 

Q.  Are  not  the  Syndicalists  and  the  industrial 
trade  unionists  all  members  of  one  group? 

A.  There  are  many  different  groups.  There 
are  some  trade  unionists  who  will  co-operate, 
there  are  others  who  will  not,  and  the  tendency 
in  this  country  just  now  is  toward  dissension. 

Q.  Is  the  doctrine  of  sabotage  ethically  justi- 
fiable? 

A.  I  think  I  answered  that  question  in  the  last 
of  my  speech.  No  action  is  ethically  justifiable 
which  results  in  a  larger  social  injury.  And 
taking  the  whole  social  effects  of  sabotage  upon 
the  world  as  well  as  upon  the  employer  it  is  in- 
jurious. And  it  is  unethical  because  of  this. 


SYNDICALISM  79 

Q.  Dare  we  trust  this  outlawed  class  who  con- 
stitute the  I.  W.  W.  very  largely? 

A.  The  question  of  danger  is  that  their  passiv- 
ity may  merge  to  popular  passion.  That  is  the 
underlying  danger  in  the  fact  that  you  can't 
achieve  results  by  passivity  alone.  You  have 
two  alternatives;  that  is  to  attempt  to  do  it  by 
force  and  the  other  is  to  go  through  a  long  course 
of  patient  education  of  the  community. 

Q.  Were  not  many  strikes  won  by  the  use  of 
sabotage  in  the  United  States? 

A.  That  depends  upon  what  you  mean  by  the 
term.  They  are  not  included  in  the  term  as 
Syndicalists  use  it,  to  mean  not  collective  action 
but  rather  individual  action  for  collective  needs. 

Q.  How  far  would  the  advocates  of  present 
sabotage  under  the  present  system  be  justified 
by  the  action  of  those  who  for  principle  threw 
the  tea  in  Boston  Harbor? 

A.  If  they  follow  the  same  principles  they 
would  lead  to  the  same  results.  Whether  they 
would  be  justified  is  an  open  question. 


IV.  THE  DEMAND  FOE  LEISURE 

ONE  of  the  first  demands  of  labour  is  the  demand 
for  release  from  excessive  toil.  This  becomes 
also  the  demand  for  leisure,  and  upon  the  satis- 
faction of  that  demand  depends  the  possibility  of 
labour  being  able  to  attain  its  own  ideals.  The 
programme  of  the  Socialist  or  of  the  Syndicalist, 
in  fact  any  programme  for  the  development  of 
the  welfare  of  the  group  of  toil,  depends  upon  a 
certain  amount  of  training,  and  preparation 
which  can  only  be  secured  upon  the  basis  of 
leisure. 

Now  labour  has  made  some  gains  in  the  direc- 
tion of  securing  its  primary  demand :  "  a  fair 
day's  work  for  a  fair  day's  pay."  In  the  early 
part  of  the  last  century,  the  average  working 
day  in  English-speaking  countries  was  fourteen 
hours.  In  the  middle  of  the  last  century  the 
average  working  day  in  this  country  was  twelve 
hours.  As  late  as  1860  people  were  working  in 
the  cotton  mills  of  Massachusetts  for  a  13 
hour  day  and  a  78  hour  week.  To-day  the  aver- 
age working  day  in  English-speaking  countries 
is  about  ten  hours,  and  the  greatest  part  of  that 

80 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  81 

gain  has  come  in  the  last  twenty -five  years.  In 
Boston  the  first  eight-hour  league  in  this  country 
was  organised.  In  Massachusetts  was  estab- 
lished the  first  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  to  give 
the  public  the  facts,  without  which  this  fight  for 
relief  from  excessive  toil  could  not  be  success- 
fully waged.  The  United  States  Government 
began  to  reduce  its  working  day  before  the 
middle  of  the  last  century,  cutting  down  first  to 
ten  hours  in  its  industrial  establishments,  and 
then  to  eight,  and  that  which  is  good  for  the 
Government  ought  to  be  good  for  private  indus- 
try. But  I  suppose  it  is  one  of  the  vices  of 
democracy,  that  we  will  achieve  certain  social 
gains  in  government  employment  in  order  to  get 
the  support  of  labour  and  will  refrain  from 
enforcing  those  gains  in  private  industry  in 
order  not  to  alienate  the  employing  interests. 

We  have  in  the  matter  of  women's  labour  made 
still  further  gains.  In  the  case  of  both  women 
and  minors  we  have  reduced  the  working  day 
from  fourteen  and  sixteen  hours  (which  it  was 
in  the  beginning  of  the  last  century),  to  ten  and 
eight.  Most  child  labour  laws  now  in  the  pro- 
gressive States  refuse  to  permit  the  employment 
of  children  between  fourteen  and  eighteen  years 
for  more  than  eight  hours,  and  two  or  three 
States  have  eight-hour  laws  regarding  the  labour 
of  women.  The  United  States  Supreme  Court 


82  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

has  upheld  the  ten-hour  law  for  women  and  is 
now  considering  the  eight-hour  law. 

We  have  also  made  some  progress  in  eliminat- 
ing the  seven-day  week.  There  has  been  a  united 
demand  on  the  part  of  labour,  on  the  part  of 
intelligent  politicians,  and  on  the  part  of  the 
united  churches  of  this  country  to  secure  the 
relief  of  labour  from  the  seven-day  week.  The 
demand  is  made  on  the  simple  basis  of  the 
necessity  of  the  rest  day,  on  the  principle  that 
the  man  is  more  sacred  even  than  any  day,  and 
that  to  the  man  must  be  secured  the  right  of 
rest.  When  labour  becomes  fully  aware  of  the 
necessity  for  the  weekly  rest  day  and  will  join 
with  its  full  force  with  the  allied  groups  in  mak- 
ing that  demand,  we  shall  secure  it,  in  every 
State  in  this  Union.  It  is  an  indication  again 
of  the  backwardness  of  our  social  organisation 
that  only  at  this  late  day  we  should  be  enforcing 
a  demand  for  a  weekly  rest  day. 

There  are  probably  almost  20  per  cent,  of  the 
workers  of  this  country  who  are  working  where 
the  twelve-hour  day  still  obtains.  That  percent- 
age covers  of  course  a  great  many  skilled  trades 
where  the  eight-hour  day  has  been  secured  by 
organisation  and  it  therefore  leaves  a  great  many 
trades  and  industries  where  the  twelve-hour  day 
is  still  running.  The  steel  trade  is  the  greatest 
offender  in  this  respect.  United  States  Steel 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  83 

insists  that  less  than  30  per  cent,  of  its  men  are 
working  a  twelve-hour  day,  but  that  is  not  a 
fair  computation  for  the  reason  that  it  covers 
all  the  men  in  the  employ  of  the  steel  trust. 
When  you  limit  the  inquiry,  as  it  should  be 
limited,  to  the  men  working  in  those  branches 
of  the  trade  in  which  the  twelve-hour  shift  is 
practiced,  for  example  the  blast-furnaces,  you 
have  between  fifty  and  sixty  per  cent,  that  are 
working  the  twelve-hour  day.  In  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  steel  manufacturers  of  Great 
Britain  and  Germany  have  gone  over  to  the  eight- 
hour  day  and  have  been  more  proficient  in  pro- 
duction as  a  result,  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute 
of  this  country  refuses  to  abolish  the  twelve-hour 
shift, 

In  this  country  the  gains  in  reducing  the  hours 
of  labour  have  been  secured  in  the  face  of  the 
opposition  of  the  employers  who  have  stead- 
fastly, for  the  most  part,  opposed  both  organised 
labour  in  its  attempt  for  shorter  hours  and  have 
fought  short  hour  legislation  through  their 
lobbies.  And  it  is  the  power  of  organised  labour 
that  has  called  attention  to  the  necessity  for 
short  hour  legislation.  It  was  the  bookbinders 
of  England  who  first  proposed  the  ten-hour  law ; 
it  was  the  ship  caulkers  of  the  United  States, 
back  in  1806,  who  produced  the  first  ten-hour 
law  here;  it  was  organised  labour  in  Australia 


84  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

that  formed  the  first  Eight  Hour  League ;  and  it 
was  only  when  the  Women's  Trade  Union  League 
became  an  active  force  in  making  legislation  that 
we  were  able  to  procure  legislation  for  women 
and  children.  The  great  initiating  force  in 
shortening  the  working  day  has  been  the  organ- 
ised labour  of  this  country. 

THE  RESULTS  OF  FATIGUE 

The  essence  of  the  first  demand  in  this  field  of 
the  shorter  work-day  is  that  labour  should  be  pro- 
tected from  the  results  of  fatigue.  When  you 
are  trying  to  set  the  length  of  the  working  day 
by  law,  for  the  defence  not  simply  of  the  working 
group  industrially  but  for  the  defence  of  society, 
the  principle  that  enters  in  is  the  principle  that 
labour  must  not  be  worked  beyond  the  point  of 
fatigue.  That  is  the  position  on  which  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court  upholds  short  day 
legislation  for  women.  On  the  basis  of  evidence 
showing  the  physical  effects  of  fatigue,  the  court 
held  that  the  public  good  demands  that  women 
should  not  be  worked  beyond  the  point  of  fatigue, 
that  being  presumably  the  limit  of  the  defensive 
power  of  the  State. 

When  you  take  the  human  animal  out  of  his 
natural  outdoor  environment  and  put  him  to 
work  within  four  walls,  you  are  creating  a  se- 
rious disturbance  in  his  constitution.  You  are 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  85 

not  simply  taking  him  out  of  his  fresh  air  envi- 
ronment ;  you  are  putting  him  into  a  factory  and 
exposing  him  to  a  strain  of  noise  and  speed. 
You  are  requiring  the  human  body,  both  its 
muscular  and  nervous  system,  to  speed  up  be- 
yond its  natural  rhythm,  beyond  the  natural 
tempo  of  its  movements,  to  keep  up  with  the 
rhythm  of  the  machine,  and  the  result  of  that  is 
a  serious  derangement,  both  physical  and  nerv- 
ous. 

The  first  results  are  seen  in  the  records  of 
accidents,  for  from  70  to  90  per  cent,  of  our  in- 
dustrial accidents  occur  after  the  hour  of  three 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and  the  larger  propor- 
tion of  these  occur  in  the  last  hour  of  the  working 
day.  It  is  the  tenth  hour  of  the  working  day 
that  is  the  deadly  hour  in  the  factory,  because 
then  nature's  safety  defences  have  been  broken 
through,  because  the  worker  has  passed  the  point 
of  fatigue. 

Perhaps  the  most  conclusive  report  on  health 
ever  shown  to  the  world  is  the  report  of  our  Com- 
mittee of  One'  Hundred  on  National  Vitality, 
now  a  United  States  document,  and  it  makes  this 
statement :  "  The  present  working  day,  from  a 
physical  standpoint,  is  altogether  too  long,  and 
keeps  the  majority  of  women  or  men  in  a  con-/ 
tinual  state  of  over-fatigue."  Now  the  patholo- 
gists  tell  us  to-day  that  there  is  a  definite  poison 


86  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

set  up  in  the  human  system  by  over-work.  They 
name  it  "  the  toxin  of  fatigue."  When  the  mus- 
cular or  nervous  energy  has  been  worked  to  the 
point  of  fatigue  the  body  no  longer  carries  off  the 
poisonous  secretions ;  they  remain  in  the  system, 
and  besides  having  their  own  toxic  effect  they 
render  the  body  more  liable  to  the  attacks  of  dis- 
ease, they  weaken  its  resistance  power  to  the 
germs  that  lie  in  wait  for  all  of  us.  And  that  is 
the  great  reason  for  the  high  mortality  rate  of 
the  wage  earning  group,  from  contagious  disease, 
and  from  that  group  of  diseases  known  as 
"misery"  diseases.  It  is  because  their  resist- 
ance power  has  been  lowered. 

One  of  the  most  striking  studies  to  show  the 
injustice  of  our  industrial  systems  is  to  take  the 
mortality  maps  of  our  various  cities  and  then 
to  find  out  the  district  in  which  that  mortality 
is  massed.  When  you  know  the  cities  you  will 
find  in  every  case  that  those  mortality  maps 
show  the  death  rate  to  be  the  most  in  the  dis- 
tricts where  the  lowest  paid  groups  of  industrial 
workers  live.  That  is,  the  death  rate  is  highest 
in  groups  that  are  paid  the  least  and  worked  the 
hardest,  where  life  is  lived  at  the  lowest  level  and 
where  it  has  the  smallest  chance  of  resisting  the 
attacks  upon  it.  And  the  effects  are  shown  not 
only  in  the  mortality  rate  but  also  in  the  effect 
upon  birth,  not  simply  upon  the  birth  rate,  al- 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  87 

though  that  is  lowered  in  the  outstanding  indus- 
trial centres,  but  it  is  shown  in  the  lowering  of 
vitality  at  birth.  When  you  bring  into  the  world 
children  whose  parents  have  been  weakened  to 
the  point  of  exhaustion,  physically  and  nerv- 
ously, through  years  of  fatigue  accompanied  by 
the  lack  of  adequate  nourishment  or  proper 
housing  and  fresh  air,  those  children  come  into 
the  world  without  an  adequate  physical  fighting 
chance.  We  talk  sometimes,  in  our  careless, 
flippant  way,  about  folks  who  are  "  born  tired." 
There  is  a  scientific  truth  in  that  very  phrase. 
There  are  children  born  of  exhausted,  under- 
nourished parents,  who  are  literally  at  birth  too 
tired  ever  to  have  a  fair  fighting  chance.  They 
can't  be  efficient  either  industrially,  intellec- 
tually, or  morally.  They  have  not  the  energy; 
they  have  not  the  vitality ;  and,  furthermore,  we 
take  no  pains  to  see  that  they  get  a  chance  to 
make  up  that  defect.  Those  children  are  placed 
in  the  worst  kind  of  environment,  in  the  lowest 
sections  of  our  cities.  And  then  we  talk  about 
the  wastrels  and  derelicts  in  the  gutters  of  our 
cities  and  wonder  at  the  cause !  From  the  stand- 
point even  merely  of  profitable  business  on  the 
present  basis,  what  greater  stupidity  could  there 
be  than  to  weaken  people  to  the  point  of  exhaus- 
tion and  then  produce  a  still  weaker  generation 
the  next  time?  What  agriculturist  would  pur- 


88  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

sue  such  a  stupid  policy  in  trying  to  procure  his 
draft  animals?  He  knows  better.  We  know 
better,  too,  only  we  have  not  yet  got  the  con- 
science to  apply  our  knowledge  in  the  way  we 
ought, 

It  was  because  of  this  fact  of  the  lessening  of 
vitality,  by  fatigue  that  the  United  States 
Supreme  Court  made  its  decision  concerning  the 
ten-hour  law  for  women.  You  will  remember 
what  part  Boston  had  in  that  by  presenting  the 
brains  and  the  heart  which  made  that  thing  pos- 
sible, as  a  gift,  to  the  working  classes  of  this 
country;  and  it  was  because  the  brains  of  Mr. 
Brandeis  and  that  woman  who  worked  with  him 
in  putting  before  the  Supreme  Court  such  a  mass 
of  medical  evidence  gathered  from  the  whole 
world  to  show  conclusively  the  effects  of  fatigue 
in  weakening  the  next  generation,  that  the 
Supreme  Court  wrote  a  new  principle  into  the 
law:  that  the  health  of  the  nation  is  more  im- 
portant than  the  goods  that  can  be  produced  by 
overworked  labour.  In  the  near  future,  when 
we  can  get  the  same  mass  of  facts  presented  to 
the  same  courts  concerning  the  labour  of  men, 
the  nation  will,  by  that  time,  have  made  up  its 
mind  that  it  can  no  more  afford  to  have  weak, 
unhealthy  fathers  than  it  can  have  weak  un- 
healthy mothers. 

The  results  of  fatigue  appear  not  merely  in  the 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  89 

physical  world ;  they  appear  also  in  the  economic 
realm.  Labour  carried  to  the  point  of  fatigue 
means  economic  loss.  That  Keport  on  National 
Vitality  astonished  the  nation  by  showing  that 
we  were  wasting  an  enormous  amount  of  money, 
computed  simply  from  the  potential  earnings  of 
those  dying  from  preventable  diseases  in  this 
country.  Then  it  showed  that  the  economic 
waste  from  undue  fatigue  was  much  greater 
than  that  from  the  great  preventable  diseases; 
that  the  number  of  people  who  suffer  from  par- 
tial disability  due  to  fatigue  constitutes  the  great 
majority  of  the  population.  So  we  have  here  a 
great -social  evil  from  which  the  whole  popula- 
tion is  suffering  but  from  which  the  industrial 
section  is  suffering  more  than  any  other  group 
in  the  population. 

Now  besides  the  directly  traceable  economic 
loss  which  comes  from  the  inefficiency  in  produc- 
tion of  those  who  are  worked  to  the  point  of 
fatigue,  there  is  also  the  indirect  economic  loss 
that  the  long  working  day  brings.  It  involves  a 
low  wage,  and  that  means  a  low  standard  of  liv- 
ing, and  that  means  a  small  measure  of  consump- 
tion and  that  means  that  the  economic  capacity 
of  the  country  is  constantly  reduced.  The  old 
saw  is  perfectly  correct  that  said : 

"  Whether  you  work  by  the  piece  or  the  day, 
Decreasing  the  hour  increases  the  pay." 


90  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

Indirectly,  of  course,  this  is  true,  not  only  for 
the  wage-earning  population  affected  but  for  the 
whole  of  society.  Because  when  you  decrease 
the  working  day,  you  raise  the  standard  of  living 
and  increase  the  demands  of  the  wage  earning 
group, —  you  therefore  make  the  demand  for 
more  production,  more  men  are  employed,  and 
again  you  raise  the  standard  of  living.  It  is 
economically  profitable  to  employers  to  reduce 
the  working  day  and  increase  the  standard  of 
living  for  the  working  group.  The  short  hour 
day  has  proved  this  even  under  the  present  sys- 
tem; it  has  been  demonstrated  again  and  again. 

In  1881  a  report  of  the  Massachusetts  Bureau 
of  Statistics  declared  that  in  the  Atlantic  States 
the  reduction  of  the  working  day  from  eleven 
to  ten  hours  had  produced  an  increase  and  not 
a  decrease,  economically.  In  many  places  the 
eight-hour  day  has  also  pr.oved  economically 
more  profitable.  One  of  the  best  outstanding 
cases  is  that  of  the  United  States  Government, 
based  upon  two  battleships  built  in  1894 
from  the  same  plans.  One  was  built  in  the  Gov- 
ernment shipyards  at  eight  hours  a  day ;  one  was 
built  by  private  contract  at  ten  hours  a  day ;  and 
when  they  got  through  the  Government-built 
ship,  on  the  eight  hour  day  proposition,  showed 
conclusively  that  the  average  work  per  man  per 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  91 

hour  was  over  25  per  cent,  more  than  on  the  ten 
hour  day  privately  built  ship. 

Over  in  England  in  the  iron  and  steel  trade  is 
another  remarkable  illustration.  There  organ- 
ised labour  and  capital  worked  together  to  dem- 
onstrate the  increased  efficiency  due  to  shorter 
hours.  Organised  labour  agreed  that  it  would 
have  to  reduce  gradually  by  small  groups  of  men, 
so  as  to  make  the  change  without  undue  derange- 
ment of  the  industry  and  that  those  who  were 
getting  the  higher  wage  would  have  to  pay  a 
bonus  to  those  who  would  have  to  get  a  lower 
wage  until  it  could  be  demonstrated  that  the 
experiment  was  profitable.  The  result  was  that 
in  a  very  short  time  the,/  whole  change  was  ef- 
fected and  that  bonus  didn't  have  to  be  paid  be- 
cause it  was  proved  that  the  change  resulted  in 
increase  of  production. 

Now  of  course  there  is  a  limit  to  the  increase 
of  production  because  by  shortening  the  work- 
day, although  you  can  speed  up  the  men  in  many 
industries,  in  some  machine  industries  you  can't 
speed  up  the  machines.  In  some  industries  it  is 
economically  profitable  to  run  on  the  eight  hour 
rather  than  on  the  nine  or  the  ten  or  the  twelve 
hour  basis.  Where  it  is  not,  where  the  effect  of 
reducing  hours  is  to  reduce  the  profits,  it  raises 
the  fundamental  question  of  the  reward  of  the 


92  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

capitalists  and  its  relations  to  the  community 
good.  When  that  question  is  raised  the  only 
answer  of  the  community  must  be  that  the  reduc- 
tion of  the  working  day  cannot  be  determined  by 
the  question  of  profits,  but  simply  and  solely  by 
the  question  of  social  welfare.  The  question  is 
to  whom  does  this  matter  of  profits  fundamen- 
tally refer?  Are  we  to  consider  here  the 
economic  values  simply  in  terms  of  the  good  of 
one  group  that  happens  in  the  course  of  social 
development  now  to  have  possession  of  industry, 
or  are  we  to  consider  economic  values  in  terms 
of  the  good  of  the  whole  community?  If  we 
decide  the  latter,  the  next  question  is,  if  we  are  to 
consider  simply  whether  the  short  day  is  profit- 
able to  the  whole  community  economically  speak- 
ing, or  whether  its  profit  is  to  be  considered  in 
terms  of  the  net  results  to  human  life.  And  the 
new  economy,  corresponding  to  the  quickened 
sense  of  human  justice  —  the  new  economy  that 
is  just  getting  itself  written  in  the  text-books  — 
insists  that  the  only  final  economic  standard  is 
that  of  human  values  and  not  the  production  of 
goods. 

I  picked  up  my  morning  paper  this  morning 
and  I  found  an  editorial  on  the  question  of  in- 
dustrial conservation  —  the  results  of  a  study  of 
a  professor  in  a  great  university  concerning  the 
effects  of  scientific  management  —  and  I  find  it 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  93 

classified  under  three  heads:  complete  success, 
partial  success  and  failure.  The  standard  of 
success  is  whether  there  has  been  an  increased 
profit  and  an  increased  wage  —  "  business  three 
times  what  it  was  before  "  —  "  f  18,000  saved  in 
six  years,"  with  no  attempt  to  determine  the  off- 
set in  the  way  of  deteriorated  health.  The 
modern  political  economy  is  not  satisfied  with 
such  a  test  as  that.  We  want  to  know  not 
simply  whether  there  is  more  profits  and  more 
wages,  but  what  are  the  long-time  results  to 
human  life,  what  are  the  results  in  the  end  to  the 
worker  and  to  society;  and  not  merely  whether 
or  not  he  has  shown  any  sickness  in  the  first  year 
of  this  efficiency  scheme  but  what  is  the  result 
over  a  period  of  years  to  his  nervous  system  and 
his  moral  and  mental  nature.  That  is  what  we 
want  to  know  before  we  are  going  to  pass  judg- 
ment on  the  value  of  this  thing.  The  question  is 
not  answered  by  showing  increased  efficiency  in 
production,  or  no  immediate  depreciation  in 
health;  it  is  only  answered  when  you  trace  the 
results  of  the  fatigue  engendered  by  this  effi- 
ciency process,  back  over  a  period  of  years,  in  its 
individual  and  moral  results.  And  so,  finally, 
we  are  going  to  settle  this  question  of  fatigue  and 
speeding  up,  and  efficiency,  by  its  moral  and 
social  results.  What  are  they? 

Go  through  the  twelve  hour  communities  and 


94,  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

find  out!  Let  the  scientists  tell  you  from  their 
Keport  on  Vitality.  They  declare  that  fatigue 
starts  a  vicious  circle,  involving  drunkenness  and 
other  excesses.  Let  another  scientist  speak: 
"  The  first  school  of  man's  family  life  is  a  closed 
book  against  the  man  who  only  comes  home  dead 
tired  at  night."  Go  through  the  twelve  hour 
communities  in  this  country  and  you  will  find 
confirmation  of  this  statement.  You  will  find 
there  increased  consumption  of  alcohol,  with  a 
lower  degradation  of  human  life;  you  will  find 
there  also  the  most  brutal  forms  of  vice  existing 
as  a  natural  result  of  reducing  human  nature  to 
the  brute  state.  The  mental  and  moral  and 
social  results,  in  the  broadest  sense,  of  fatigue, 
are  simply  disastrous  to  society.  This  is  in- 
creasingly clear  in  the  case  of  the  labour  of  girls 
and  women ;  there  it  is  particularly  clear.  When 
you  face  the  great  fact  that  the  armies  of  vice  are 
recruited  preponderantly  (almost  universally) 
from  the  wage  earning  group,  you  are  facing  one 
of  the  moral  effects  of  fatigue.  The  relation  of 
improper  conditions  of  labour  for  girls  and 
women  to  vice  is  not  simply  a  relation  between 
low  wages  with  monotonous  life  and  easy  money 
with  excitement  —  no  such  bald  choice  is  thrown 
up  as  that  (except  in  a  very  few  cases)  to  the 
working  women  of  this  country.  What  happens 
is  this ;  the  slow  breaking  down  of  nature's  moral 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  95 

safety  devices  by  the  long  process  of  fatigue. 
Then,  as  the  great  majority  of  testimony  from 
the  places  of  vice  proves,  then  life  itself  becomes 
the  betrayer  because  nature  has  been  reduced  to 
the  point  of  exhaustion  almost,  through  a  period 
of  over-work  and  monotonous  occupation. 

When  moral  disaster  does  not  occur  whether 
in  manhood  or  womanhood,  as  the  effect  of 
fatigue,  you  still  have  other  serious  moral  re- 
sults. You  have  life  reduced  almost  to  the  brute 
level,  you  have  life  that  is  simply  one  round  of 
toil,  with  then  perhaps  some  corresponding  ex- 
citement to  atone  for  the  monotony  of  its  dead 
level,  but  with  no  response  to  the  stimulus  for  the 
development  of  the  higher  nature.  In  the  twelve 
hour  communities  the  low  level  of  life  is  the 
worst  fact  that  the  social  observer  has  to  face  — 
the  fact  that  life  has  no  power  of  reaching  up 
because  its  energies  are  so  exhausted,  that  it  has 
no  capacity  to  climb  because  it  has  been  kept 
down  by  the  dead  pressure  of  fatigue. 

THE  RESULTS  OF  LEISURE 

If  the  first  duty  is  to  rescue  the  group  at  the 
bottom  from  the  pressure  of  fatigue,  the  next 
duty  is  to  secure  for  the  industrial  group  the 
results  of  leisure.  If  the  industrial  group  must 
be  protected  from  the  results  of  fatigue  it  must 
have  access  to  the  results  of  leisure;  and  the 


96  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

results  of  leisure  are  culture.  All  your  super- 
structure of  civilisation  depends  upon  a  certain 
degree  of  leisure  and  if  men  are  to  be  educated 
they  must  be  released  from  exhausting  toil,  they 
must  be  released  from  continued  application  to 
the  work  of  producing  the  necessities  of  life  if 
they  are  to  have  any  chance  to  climb  up  to  the 
heights  of  culture.  You  may  define  culture  in 
any  sense  you  please.  You  may  have  the  Greek 
ideal  of  culture  of  the  body.  What  chance  has  a 
man  worked  to  the  point  of  fatigue  to  follow  that 
ideal  whether  he  sits  over  a  desk  or  works  with 
a  pick  in  the  street;  in  either  occupation  what 
chance  has  he?  You  may  tell  him  that  his  body 
needs  a  bath  every  morning  to  allow  it  to 
breathe;  you  may  tell  him  that  his  muscles  need 
exercise;  is  he  going  to  get  it?  Has  he  the  time 
and  the  strength?  And  you  may  build  your 
gymnasiums  and  your  swimming  pools,  and  they 
are  of  no  benefit,  as  long  as  he  is  worked  to  the 
point  of  exhaustion.  You  have  physical  mal- 
adjustment instead  of  physical  development. 

You  tell  men  that  there  are  opportunities  for 
mental  culture.  No  man  who  is  speeded  up  for 
ten  hours  a  day  has  got  time  or  energy  enough 
left  over  from  the  bread  and  butter  business  of 
life  to  make  that  struggle,  to  go  through  that 
process  of  discipline.  Here  stands  a  Hebrew 
beside  a  machine  in  the  sweat  of  New  York,  and 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  9T 

he  says :  "  If  I  am  hungry  in  New  York  some- 
one will  give  me  a  crust,  and  if  I  am  thirsty  some- 
one will  give  me  a  drink,  but  now  my  soul  is 
thirsty  for  knowledge  and  my  mind  is  starving 
for  learning,  and  who  will  give  it  to  me?  "  He 
says:  "Men  tell  me  to  go  to  night  school. 
Have  they  ever  tried  it  after  working  ten  hours 
a  day  at  a  machine? "  You  can  extend  your 
night  school  system  as  much  as  you  please,  boast 
as  you  may  about  our  free  educational  system,  if 
people  have  not  time  to  take  advantage  of  it,  it 
is  all  a  bitter  mockery  to  them.  As  the  Colorado 
steel  worker  said :  "  Andy  can  build  a  library 
but  it's  no  good  to  build  it  here.  We  twelve 
hour  men  have  no  time  or  strength  to  read  his 
books." 

Here  comes  Professor  Steiner,  who  has  come  up 
from  it  all  and  he  says :  "  The  end  of  the  day, 
when  the  work  was  over,  proved  to  be  the  hardest 
period  of  my  experience.  I  went  to  sleep  at  once 
when  the  strain  was  over.  I  was  just  like  the 
cattle."  We  treat  them  like  cattle  and  then  call 
them  cattle.  He  was  then  working  in  the  steel 
mill  in  Pittsburgh  ten  hours  a  day.  He  says: 
"  The  worst  feature  is  the  day's  complete  ex- 
haustion which  follows  long  hours  with  its  numb- 
ness and  the  dullness  that  grips  into  a  man's 
soul.  At  the  end  of  a  ten  hour  day  in  the  steel 
mill,  if  I  had  been  offered  anything  except  a  good 


98  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

supper  and  bed,  I  would  not  have  accepted  it, 
although  I  was  hungry  for  the  other  things." 

Now  it  is  harder  to  climb  out  than  it  was 
twenty  years  ago  when  Professor  Steiner 
climbed. 

This  same  thing  is  true  about  the  development 
of  the  spiritual  life.  If  a  man  is  going  to  have 
a  chance  to  develop  his  spirit,  if  he  is  to  hold  high 
converse  with  the  great  and  lofty  ones  of  the  past, 
to  invite  his  soul  into  fellowship  with  the  Eter- 
nal, to  throw  his  passionate  spirit  into  the  great 
struggle  for  brotherhood  and  justice,  he  must 
have  time  and  strength  to  do  these  things. 

The  cultured  class  is  the  leisure  class;  and  if 
we  are  going  to  have  culture  throughout  the 
whole  of  our  society,  we  must  have  leisure 
throughout  the  whole  of  society.  And  remember 
this  also :  a  leisure  class  is  never  a  truly  cultured 
class,  for  the  cultured  class  is  a  working  class 
too.  God  didn't  make  some  folks  all  muscle  and 
others  all  brain.  He  didn't  make  some  all  hands 
and  others  all  mind.  He  put  them  together, 
and  the  divorce  of  so-called  culture  and  produc- 
tive work  has  been  one  of  the  fatal  fallacies  of 
civilisation.  We  have  to  put  culture  into  the 
very  heart  of  the  industrial  process  and  let  a  man 
in  the  making  of  things  find  the  development  of 
his  mind;  let  him  there,  as  he  does  the  work  of 
the  world,  find  all  the  beauty  and  all  the  art, 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  99 

and  all  the  music  and  all  the  joy;  let  him  there 
put  his  soul  into  fellowship  with  the  eternal, 
give  his  spirit  into  bonds  of  brotherhood  with  his 
fellowmen.  That  will  be  true  culture  —  that 
the  human  race  may  develop  its  soul  while  work- 
ing out  things. 

THE   RIGHT  TO   LIVE 

Thus  we  see  that  the  demand  for  leisure  is  the 
demand  for  life  itself.  It  is  the  demand  for  the 
results  of  leisure,  the  attainment  of  all  true  cul- 
ture. Somebody  stops  to  ask :  "  How  will  he  use 
it?"  That  question  is  not  before  the  house. 
There  is  a  previous  question  there  that  must  be 
answered  first.  When  you  have  given  men  their 
rights  you  can  begin  to  talk  about  how  they 
should  use  them  and  not  before.  And  I  would 
like  to  ask  what  class  has  the  right  to  raise  that 
question  to  the  labour  group?  Is  it  the  idle 
rich?  Watch  their  clubs  and  their  drawing 
rooms  and  their  New  Year's  feasts  in  the  restau- 
rants. Is  it  the  business  men?  I  read  the  other 
day  in  a  local  paper  that  an  official  of  this  State 
had  to  send  an  officer  of  the  law  to  follow  him  to 
a  banquet  of  the  business  men  to  which  he  had 
been  invited,  because  it  was  so  indecent.  Is  it 
the  intellectual  group?  I  go  to  the  high-brow 
club  only  to  get  poisoned  with  the  same  foul  air 
that  I  find  in  the  labour  hall.  Is  it  the  college 


100  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

group?  Watch  their  athletics  conducted  on  the 
same  commercialised,  gladiatoral  plan  that  made 
a  Eoman  holiday.  It  does  not  lie  in  the  mouth 
of  any  group  in  this  country  to  raise  that  ques- 
tion about  the  labour  group.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  every  time  the  labour  group  has  secured 
leisure  it  has  used  it  for  its  social  development. 
Of  course  there  will  be  individuals  who  will 
abuse  liberty,  but  the  net  result  of  liberty  has 
been  this :  wherever  the  eight  hour  day  exists  it 
has  been  used  for  the  intellectual  and  moral  de- 
velopment of  the  worker.  There  is  no  justifica- 
tion for  the  charge  that  indirectly  the  reduction 
of  hours  and  the  raising  of  the  living  standard  is 
strengthening  the  organised  forces  of  iniquity. 
To-day  when  you  want  support  for  a  moral 
proposition,  when  the  churches  want  support  in 
a  temperance  fight,  the  labour  leaders  supply  it. 
I  have  just  learned  to-day  that  the  strongest  sup- 
port for  a  certain  proposition  in  the  fight  against 
alcohol  is  from  the  leaders  of  the  labour  group. 
They  are  coming  to  understand  how  to  use  their 
time,  how  to  use  it  for  the  development  of  their 
own  capacities  in  order  that  they  may  climb  to 
their  proper  place. 

The  demand  for  leisure  is  the  demand  for  life 
itself.  We  have  been  expanding  life.  It  is  a 
bigger  world  we  live  in  —  new  horizons  in  gov- 
ernment, in  industry,  new  horizons  in  thought, 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  Ltil'SCJ'R.'E  lOt 

everywhere.    And  in  that  expanding  world  you 
have  put  the  industrial  worker  into  a  smaller 
world  and  a  smaller  environment.     For  your 
automatic  machine  worker  is  not  as  big  a  man 
as  the  old  craftsman  that  preceded  him.    And 
when  that  automatic  man  is  worked  to  the  point 
of  exhaustion  he  is  still  smaller;  yet  in  this 
bigger  world  you  need  larger  men.     So  it  is  not 
his  loss  alone ;  it  is  a  menace  to  society  to  suffer 
that  man  to  become  smaller.     He  becomes  a  prey 
to  the  pressure  of  special  interests  on  both  sides 
of  this  social  question;  he  becomes  the  easy  tool 
of  political  demagogues ;  he  becomes  the  dupe  of 
priestcraft,  of  quackery  in  religion.     And  the 
world  needs  that  man  because  he  is  the  man  who 
makes  the  group  that  is  going  to  control  the 
world  to-morrow.     The  world  needs  that  man  to 
have  the  biggest  development  and  environment 
that  can  be  accorded  to  him.     The  democracy  of 
the  Carpenter  of  Nazareth  demands  that.     You 
read  the  Scripture  and  you  can't  see  why  the 
banker  should  go  home  at  three  or  four  o'clock 
and  the  labourer  should  stay  in  the  mills  until 
six   o'clock.     There   is   no   justice   to   it.     The 
men  who  do  the  harder,  longer,  and  more  dan- 
gerous work  are  the  ones  who  need  more  recrea- 
tion and  more  chance  for  the  release  from  the 
effects  of  that  toil.     The  teachings  of  the  Car- 
penter demand  that  we  drive  out  of  the  world 


L(K  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

forever  and  ever  the  idea  that  one  class  of  people 
are  to  do  all  the  difficult,  dangerous  and  monot- 
onous work. 

We  cannot  have  a  Brahmin  class  of  culture  in 
our  land  with  special  privilege  in  leisure  and  a 
monopoly  of  intellectual  service. 

The  rule  of  the  world  to-morrow  is  to  go  to 
brains,  and  brains  must  be  developed  if  we  are 
to  have  a  universal  and  permanent  democracy  in 
the  world.  The  teachings  of  Jesus  demand 
this  —  that  there  shall  be  no  group  of  special 
privilege  in  society,  that  the  innermost  worth  of 
the  downmost  man  shall  be  developed  to  the  ut- 
termost point.  It  demands  a  brotherhood  of  la- 
bour and  toil  where  all  the  people  share  in  the 
dangers  and  difficulties  of  the  hard  work  of  the 
world,  and  a  brotherhood  of  leisure  where  all  the 
people  share  equally  in  all  the  opportunities  of 
culture  and  development. 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  103 


Q.  Is  not  the  rate  of  progress  of  the  present 
time  more  important  than  its  direction? 

A.  I  think  that  the  direction  is  established, 
and  I  agree  with  the  question  that  the  main  task 
now  is  to  accelerate  the  rate  of  progress  in  that 
direction. 

Q.  Is  there  any  group  of  disciples  who  are  fol- 
lowing the  rules  laid  down  by  the  Carpenter  of 
Nazareth? 

A.  I  know  many  groups.  I  meet  them  in  all 
walks  of  life ;  some  in  the  employing  group,  some 
in  the  trade  union  group,  some  in  the  socialist 
group,  some  in  the  syndicalist  group,  some  in  the 
privileged  class,  who  are  genuinely  trying,  as  best 
they  can,  to  follow  and  carry  out  that  teaching. 

Q.  Does  not  the  capitalist  foresee  the  ultimate 
break-down  of  labour  and  so  refuses  to  hire  men 
after  forty  years  of  age,  getting  all  the  labour  he 
can  out  of  men  between  sixteen  and  thirty? 

A.  That  is  getting  to  be  the  general  rule  in 
large  industry,  and  scientific  management  in- 
creases the  proportion. 

Q.  Should  not  the  employed  class  try  to  work 
out  their  own  salvation  and  organize  themselves 
for  mutual  protection  instead  of  worrying  about 
a  job? 

A.  That  would  be  one  of  the  best  things  they 
could  do. 


104  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

Q.  Which  is  preferable,  the  group  of  thinkers 
who  strive  for  more  liberty  leaving  economic 
questions  to  take  care  of  themselves,  or  the  group 
who  strive  for  economic  gains  leaving  leisure  to 
take  care  of  itself? 

A.  Hitch  them  up  and  drive  them  double. 

Q.  Does  not  the  cultured  class  have  to  work? 
Do  you  advise  your  theological  students  when 
they  get  a  parish  to  get  out  and  work? 

A.  I  think  I  made  it  clear  that  no  class  can  be 
truly  cultured  that  separates  itself  from  the 
actual  work  of  the  world.  We  shall  never  get 
the  higher  type  of  culture  until  we  join  mental 
work  with  actual  production.  We  are  trying  to 
do  it  with  our  theological  students  as  nearly  as 
possible. 

Q.  How  about  the  short  time  as  applied  to  the 
farmer?  Doesn't  it  hurt  the  smaller  one  un- 
duly? 

A.  No,  if  we  get  rid  of  the  concentrated  con- 
trol of  the  transportation  of  farm  products  the 
small  farmer  has  a  good  chance. 

Q.  What  is  the  title  of  the  report  of  the  Com- 
mittee of  One  Hundred? 

A.  Report  on  National  Vitality. 

Q.  If  the  eight  hour  life  is  economically 
proved  sound  why  isn't  it  adopted  by  all  manu- 
facturers? 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  LEISURE  105 

A.  I  heard  a  man  say  the  other  day  that  you 
can't  legislate  for  blame  fools. 

Q.  If  a  man  goes  to  work  at  four  o'clock,  works 
until  twelve  o'clock,  then  has  half  an  hour  for 
lunch,  goes  back  to  work  at  twelve-thirty,  and 
works  until  eight-thirty,  is  that  an  eight  hour 
law?  And  if  it  occurs  on  Saturday  does  that 
make  for  leisure?  And  if  the  last  hour  of  that 
period  goes  over  into  Sunday  does  it  assist 
Christianity? 

A.  That  is  nothing  but  pure  pagan  slavery  and 
if  you  will  tell  us  where  it  is  carried  on  in  this 
city  we  will  try  to  have  it  stopped. 

Q.  It  is  carried  on  in  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment. 

A.  There  has  been  a  demand  afoot  recently 
regarding  the  postal  carriers ;  an  attempt  to  over- 
work them  and  evade  the  law.  That  attempt  has 
been  checked.  That  is  not  the  kind  of  eight  hour 
law  I  would  stand  for. 

Q.  Is  not  the  farmer  that  works  from  ten  to 
twelve  hours  a  day  out  in  the  open  air  abun- 
dantly able  to  perform  that  work,  because  he  is 
doing  it  for  himself? 

A.  That  depends  upon  the  kind  of  man  he  is. 
If  he  wants  to  live  in  the  largest  sense  of  the 
word  he  had  better  get  through  his  day's  work 
in  less  time  than  that. 


106  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

Q.  I  would  like  to  have  the  speaker's  definition 
of  leisure. 

A.  I  was  using  the  term  to-day  of  course  in  the 
sense  of  sufficient  release  from  the  necessary 
economic  work  of  life  in  order  to  develop  the 
higher  side  of  human  nature. 

Q.  I  meant  "  culture." 

A.  I  will  leave  that  to  the  newspapers. 

Q.  Doesn't  the  speeding  up  process  of  machin- 
ery bring  about  a  condition  where  the  eight  hours 
under  such  circumstances  is  worse  than  the  ten 
hours  under  ordinary  circumstances? 

A.  The  eight  hour  law  is  no  good  until  you  put 
into  the  legislation  something  about  speed  as  well 
as  time. 


V.  THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME 

THE  SOCIAL  SURPLUS,  ITS  DISTRIBUTION 

THE  first  demand  of  labour  is  for  a  fair  day's 
work  and  for  a  fair  day's  pay.  That  demand 
enlarges,  as  the  labour  movement  expands,  into 
a  demand  for  leisure  following  the  demand  for  a 
release  from  the  long  day,  and  also  into  a  demand 
for  income  following  the  demand  for  release  from 
starvation  wages.  These  two  demands  belong 
together  and,  of  course,  the  demand  of  labour  for 
income  is  only  one  expression  of  the  universal 
demand.  We  sometimes  forget  that;  because 
labor's  demand  for  income  comes  to  us  a  little 
more  directly  and  sometimes  a  little  more 
harshly  than  the  demand  of  other  groups.  We 
all  must  remember  that  the  demand  of  the  agri- 
cultural group,  of  the  capitalist  group  and  of  the 
professional  group  is  not  different  from  the  de- 
mand of  the  industrial,  wage  earning  group. 
The  wizard  of  finance,  he  milks  us  tenderly. 
But  labour's  voice  is  harsh  and  his  hand  is  rough. 
Your  great  capitalist  puts  his  finger  skilfully 
into  your  pocket  and  takes  out  what  he  wants  by 
fractions,  in  the  cost  of  food  or  the  price  of  trans- 
portation, and  if  you  don't  exactly  bless  him  for 

107 


108  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

it,  at  least  you  rather  admire  him  for  it.  But 
when  the  mechanical  wage  earner  comes  along,  it 
seems  as  though  he  were  saying,  "  Hands-up," 
because  what  he  wants  has  come  out  in  a  bigger 
sum,  and  directly.  We  shall  not  approach  this 
question  fairly  until  we  realise,  as  Kennedy  tried 
to  teach  the  folks  of  England  in  "  The  Servant 
in  the  House,"  that  the  man  who  cleans  the 
drains  has  just  as  much  right  to  the  best  of  life 
as  the  man  who  makes  sermons  or  poems.  I 
suppose,  in  this  land  of  democracy,  we  should 
now  all  concede  that  the  plumber  has  a  right  to 
live  like  a  gentleman  —  only,  of  course,  we  don't 
want  him  to  act  like  a  pirate,  when  he  can  use  his 
power. 

This  demand  for  income  is  like  the  demand  for 
leisure.  It  is  an  expression  of  the  fundamental 
right  to  live  and  not  merely  to  exist.  For  life  in 
its  highest  form,  the  life  of  culture  and  develop- 
ment, rests  equally  upon  the  possession  of  suf- 
ficient leisure  to  develop  it  and  sufficient  income 
to  maintain  it. 

RELATION   OF  INCOME  TO  LIFE 

Income  bears  this  direct  relation  to  life  —  the 
lack  of  it  means  that  life  is  weakened,  diminished 
and  distorted  and  finally  becomes  degenerate. 
The  difference  between  a  low  and  high  order  of 
civilisation  may  not  be,  as  some  witty  cynic  has 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  109 

said,  "  the  difference  between  a  piece  of  bread  and 
a  piece  of  beefsteak,"  but  there  is  a  fundamental 
difference,  nevertheless,  between  the  results  of 
adequate  nourishment  and  the  results  of  under- 
nourishment. As  the  world  is  learning  to-day, 
that  if  you  want  armies  to  fight  it  is  as  important 
to  feed  them  properly  as  to  give  them  ammuni- 
tion, so  we  must  learn  that  if  we  want  the  wage 
earners  to  fight  for  us,  to  do  the  work  of  the 
world  properly,  they  will  have  to  be  fed  poperly. 

Under-nourishment  or  lack  of  proper  nourish- 
ment and  of  physical  fitness  leads  you  in  a 
vicious  circle.  It  makes  for  inefficiency,  which 
leads  to  disease.  That  results  in  a  still  lower 
income,  and  so  around  and  around  you  go  in  that 
vicious  circle  until  finally  you  have  a  group  that 
is  so  far  below  the  normal  standard  both  physi- 
cally, mentally  and  morally,  that  it  is,  in  fact, 
a  degenerate  group.  You  can  find  that  group  in 
a  greater  or  less  degree  in  every  one  of  your  in- 
dustrial cities  as  the  result  of  the  continuance 
of  that  vicious  circle  of  under-nourishment,  dis- 
ease and  inefficiency. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  presence  of  sufficient 
income  and  nourishment  is  absolutely  necessary, 
of  course,  to  the  higher  life.  Would  folks  get 
educated?  Books  cost  money.  Would  folks 
develop  the  spiritual  side  of  life,  the  things  upon 
which  man's  spiritual  nature  feeds?  It  requires 


110  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

income  to  provide  them.  The  folks  who  haven't 
got  the  income  have  to  face  a  more  serious  hunger 
than  the  hunger  for  bread;  it  is  the  hunger  for 
beauty,  it  is  the  hunger  for  knowledge,  it  is  the 
hunger  for  spiritual  satisfaction  and  growth. 
And  that  is  the  real  force  that  is  to-day  driving 
the  industrial  wage-earning  group  to  demand 
more  income. 

They  see  the  higher  life  and  want  to  have  an 
American  standard  of  living  really  brought  to 
them.  We  think  with  some  justice  that  we  have 
a  somewhat  higher  average  of  efficiency  here  than 
elsewhere,  but  that  efficiency  depends  upon  that 
standard  of  living  and  that  standard  of  living 
depends  upon  a  certain  expenditure.  It  means 
higher  tastes,  it  means  an  increased  demand  for 
the  wherewithal  to  satisfy  those  tastes  and  that 
standard.  And  folks  ask :  "  Where  is  this  thing 
going  to  stop?  "  as  if  they  conceive  of  the  wage 
earner  standing  continually,  like  Oliver  Twist, 
holding  his  bowl  out  and  always  asking  for  more. 
Now  in  the  name  of  all  that  is  just  where  should 
it  stop  short  of  the  satisfaction  of  this  demand? 

I  remember  a  conference  that  we  had  in 
Chicago  regarding  welfare  work  in  factories  and 
I  remember  one  labourer  getting  up  and  saying : 
"  Now,  we  are  very  glad  to  know  that  some  of 
you  people  have  proposed  to  put  bathing  privi- 
leges in  the  factories  and  give  us  a  chance  to  clean 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  111 

up  before  we  go  home ;  we  all  want  to  look  decent, 
but  there  is  something  else  we  want.  We  want 
bathtubs  in  our  homes  and  we  are  going  to  have 
them,  too."  I  remember  another  man  saying: 
"Where  is  this  thing  going  to  stop?  Why,  the 
next  thing  they  will  want  is  pianos  in  their 
homes."  And  he  called  himself  an  American 
and  a  Christian !  Now  to  him,  whose  chief  goal 
in  life  had  been  the  making  of  money,  not  the 
serving  of  his  fellowmen  —  they  go  together 
sometimes,  but  not  often  or  always  —  to  him,  the 
bathtub  and  the  piano  might  be  luxuries,  but  to 
the  modern  American  Christian  this  and  a  great 
many  other  things  are  simply  necessities,  neces- 
sities of  the  higher  life.  And  as  long  as  you  are 
teaching  higher  standards  of  living  in  the  public 
schools  and  as  long  as  you  are  showing  the  re- 
sults of  this  higher  standard  of  living,  you  may 
depend  upon  it  that  just  so  long  the  demand  of 
the  industrial  wage-earning  class  is  being  in- 
creased by  all  of  the  natural,  normal  processes  of 
our  American  civilisation.  And  that  demand 
will  not  stop.  You  can't  compare  the  condition 
of  folks  here  to  what  they  had  in  the  old  country. 
You  can't  compare  the  condition  of  folks  here 
with  what  men  had  in  similar  places  forty  and 
fifty  years  ago.  The  only  sound  basis  of  com- 
parison is  with  the  average  living  standard  which 
they  see  around  them  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the 


112  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

other  hand  with  the  actual  amount  of  their  pro- 
duction, as  they  are  coming  increasingly  to  see 
it  to-day.  These  are  the  comparisons  that  have 
to  be  made,  and  in  so  far  as  Christian  ethics  is 
concerned,  the  whole  impact  of  Christianity  is  to 
increase  that  demand  and  not  to  lessen  it. 

A  man  stood  up  in  a  meeting  that  I  attended 
in  another  city  concerning  welfare  work  and  he 
said  —  he  was  a  machinist  in  a  factory :  "  I 
want  something  more  than  welfare  work  in  the 
factory."  He  said :  "  I  have  got  two  boys  in 
my  home  and  I  don't  want  them  to  go  through 
the  mill."  His  voice  broke.  "I  want  to  put 
them  through  the  college  up  here  on  the  hill.  I 
want  a  chance  to  do  my  welfare  work  in  my  own 
family  in  my  own  way." 

I  got  a  letter  last  week  from  a  man  in  a  town 
where  I  had  been  speaking.  He  was  a  foreman. 
He  said  that  he  had  never  lost  his  sympathy  with 
the  folks  who  were  not  earning  as  much  wages 
as  he  was.  And,  said  he :  "I  have  never  been 
able  to  realise  my  ideal,  which  I  believe  is  the 
right  of  every  wage  earner,  and  that  is  to  put 
my  children  through  college."  Now,  you  say: 
"  If  that  ideal  is  to  be  satisfied,  who  is  going  to 
do  the  rough  and  hard  work  of  the  world?  "  If 
you  are  attempting  to  satisfy  the  righteous  ideals 
of  mankind,  you  will  find  a  way  to  settle  that  — 
and  some  more  practical  questions  also. 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  113 

There  is  no  group  in  a  community  that  is  built 
around  the  democratic  principle  that  can  assume 
the  right  to  higher  education  for  its  children  and 
deny  that  right  to  any  other  group  in  the  com- 
munity. In  so  far  as  Christian  ethics  are  con- 
cerned, we  stand  for  the  expanded  life  for  all, 
not  for  the  limited,  constricted,  ascetic  life.  It 
is  the  life  more  abundant  that  the  Carpenter 
talks  about;  not  simply  life  everlasting  in  the 
world  to  come,  but  the  hundred-fold  more  abun- 
dant life  in  this  present  world.  Just  as  we  have 
proclaimed  the  right  of  every  human  soul  to  that 
eternal  life,  so  must  we  proclaim  the  right  of 
every  human  soul  to  the  more  abundant  life  in 
this  present  world  and  so  must  we  support  all  of 
the  forces  which  will  help  to  realise  that  great 
ideal. 

But  some  practical  man  says:  "How  can  it 
be  done?  There  seem  to  be  such  limits  to  human 
life  and  economic  results  that  the  Almighty 
Himself  has  put  an  eternal  sanction  on  the 
division  of  folks  into  classes  with  their  limita- 
tions." Modern  economic  science  is  offering 
cold  comfort  to  folks  who  take  refuge  in  that  kind 
of  a  theory,  because  it  is  but  a  theory.  We  have 
to-day  a  great  social  surplus  that  has  been 
built  up  by  the  improvement  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge, methods  of  industrial  organisation  and 
agricultural  production.  For  the  first  time  in 


114.  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

human  history,  the  human  race  is  now  living  on 
*a  surplus  instead  of  on  a  deficit  basis.  In  the 
long  generations  of  the  past,  races  were  strug- 
gling to  get  food  sufficient  to  afford  a  proper 
basis  for  the  existence  of  human  life,  but  that 
condition  no  longer  exists.  Hefe  is  a  great 
social  surplus  built  up,  being  produced  in  a 
greater  amount  than  will  satisfy  the  hunger  of 
the  whole  human  race.  Here  are  being  piled  up 
not  only  the  necessities  but  also  the  luxuries  of 
life.  We  see  the  evidence  of  that  social  surplus 
all  around  us.  Here  in  the  past  few  weeks  man 
after  man  has  gone  on  the  stand  before  the  Com- 
mission on  Industrial  Kelations  and  told  how 
they  have  been  giving  their  scores  and  their 
hundreds  of  millions  away.  They  have  been  dis- 
tributing this  social  surplus  which  has  been 
built  up  by  the  combined  efforts  and  favours  of 
many  people  together,  and  by  a  combination  of 
circumstances  and  the  pressure  of  the  social 
environment.  Now  labour  stands  looking  at 
that  immense  social  surplus.  And  labour  stands 
also  looking  at  the  place  where  it  is  going;  sees 
it  going  for  health  in  China  (as  labour's  voice 
has  recently  said),  for  pensions  to  university 
professors,  and  for  the  feeding  of  birds;  while 
at  the  same1  time  the  labour  that  has  helped  to 
make  that  surplus  in  these  very  industries  is  not 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  115 

able  to  properly  nourish  and  adequately  educate 
its  own  children. 

Therefore  we  face  a  question  that  is  absolutely 
different  from  the  question  of  the  reward  of  the 
individual  worker.  We  face  the  question  of  the 
distribution  by  groups  of  this  great  social  sur- 
plus ;  we  face  the  fact  that  at  present  it  is  being 
distributed  on  no  basis  of  justice  whatever  and 
that  the  results  of  this  unjust  distribution  are 
socially  detrimental  both  at  the  top  and  at  the 
bottom  of  society.  The  figures  have  been  so  often 
repeated  that  they  have  become  trite:  the  fact 
that  10  per  cent,  of  our  people  in  this  country 
own  90  per  cent,  of  the  wealth  and  that  the  other 
90  per  cent,  have  incomes  which  would  scarcely 
make  spending  money  for  the  10  per  cent. ;  the 
fact  that  the  amount  produced  —  the  market 
value  of  the  amount  produced  by  the  average  in- 
dustrial wage  earner,  according  to  the  United 
States  Census  figures,  is  just  about  three  times 
the  amount  of  the  average  industrial  wage 
earner's  income  in  this  country.  When  the  wage- 
earning  group  gets  educated  to  that  fact,  they 
are  going  to  ask  how  this  thing  has  been  juggled 
and  even  under  the  present  system,  with  capital 
requiring  its  rights  and  management  requiring 
its  rights,  labour  is  going  to  stop  the  magicians 
who  have  been  shifting  this  three-fold  shell  and 


116  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

is  going  to  find  out  under  which  shell  its  partic- 
ular pea  has  been  concealed. 

You  have  another  fundamental  fact  concern- 
ing the  distribution  of  the  fruits  of  industry  and 
that  is  the  relation  of  the  wages  of  the  industrial 
group  to  the  cost  of  living.  The  fact  is,  that  the 
cost  of  high  living,  or  the  high  cost  of  living, 
whichever  way  you  wish  to  put  it,  is  pressing 
harder  upon  the  industrial  wage-earning  group, 
perhaps,  than  upon  the  professional  group  and 
the  lower  section  of  the  middle  class  group.  We 
have  no  adequate  figures  in  this  country  to  make 
a  perfectly  exact  statement,  but  such  figures  as 
we  have  tend  to  indicate  that  at  least  75  per  cent, 
of  the  male  workers  north  of  the  Mason  and 
Dixon  line  are  to-day  getting  less  than  a  living 
wage,  when  you  compute  the  living  wage  for 
the  average  family  of  five  (that  is,  a  man  and 
wife  and  three  children),  on  the  basis  of  mere 
necessities.  For  example,  75  per  cent,  of  the 
workers  north  of  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line  are 
getting  less  than  $600  a  year.  All  our  standard 
of  living  figures  indicate  that  the  actual  cost  of 
subsistence  —  mere  physical  necessities  —  for 
the  average  family  is  from  $400  to  $600  a  year 
according  to  the  section  of  the  country,  and  that 
the  cost  of  an  adequate  living,  that  is,  providing 
something  for  recreation,  something  for  sickness, 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  117 

something  for  old  age,  is  somewhere  between 
|750  and  $1,000  according  to  the  section  of 
the  country  and  the  city  concerned.  Now  just 
broad  facts  like  that  indicate  the  fundamental 
inequity  of  our  present  distribution  of  the  joint 
product  of  our  common  work  process,  and  indi- 
cate something  more, —  that  we  have  not  yet 
attempted  to  divide  that  product,  generally 
speaking,  on  a  basis  of  justice. 

The  facts  are  undeniable:  that  prices  rise 
before  wages  and  always  fall  after  wages  have 
fallen,  and  ever  the  income  of  the  wage-earning 
group  is  pressed  down  toward  the  line  of  sub- 
sistence. If  it  is  pressed  up  at  all,  it  is  pressed 
up  usually  only  by  the  efforts  of  the  workers 
themselves  through  their  own  organisations. 
And  the  question  that  is  raised  here  concerning 
the  right  of  the  wage  earners  to  share  in  the  fruits 
of  our  civilisation,  to  share  more  largely  in  the 
material  basis  for  the  higher  life,  is  a  question 
that  must  be  answered  simply  and  solely  by  the 
standard  of  justice.  No  amount  of  philan- 
thropy, no  amount  of  benevolent  paternalism,  no 
amount  of  welfare  work,  will  either  satisfy  or 
evade  that  question.  It  is  a  question  that  cannot 
be  downed  in  the  world  as  long  as  we  have  a  con- 
science created  by  the  ethics  taught  by  Jesus. 

When  we  come  to  answer  that  question,  there 


118  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

are  one  or  two  methods  that  are  being  tried  to 
remove  or  lessen  the  inequity.  Organisation  has 
pushed  wages  up  through  collective  bargaining 
and  has  secured  a  higher  standard  of  living  for 
certain  of  its  own  members.  In  addition  to  that 
a  defence  has  been  put  up  for  some  of  the  help- 
less creatures  at  the  bottom  of  the  labour  group 
by  the  legislative  provision  of  a  minimum  wage. 
That  has  not  been  extended  very  far  in  this  coun- 
try yet.  I  think  only  seven  States  have  it  and  in 
two  of  those  the  attempt  is  only  to  make  public 
the  effect  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  wage  and  to 
depend  upon  the  pressure  of  public  opinion  to 
bring  about  a  beneficial  result,  The  principle 
enacted  by  law, —  the  method  may  be  worked  out 
in  different  ways, —  has  resulted  in  some  marked 
gains  for  the  group  at  the  bottom  of  industry. 
In  this  country  we  are  attempting  to  apply  it 
simply  to  the  working  girls  and  helpless  working 
women,  the  working  girls  and  women  who  have 
to  live  on  an  income  of  five,  and  six,  and  eight 
dollars  per  week.  One  of  these  working  girls 
said :  "  If  I  spend  more  than  seven  cents  for  a 
lunch  I  think  I  am  extravagant."  Another  said : 
"  If  I  should  spend  thirty  cents  for  a  dinner,  I 
don't  know  what  would  happen,  and,"  said  she, 
"  I  am  tired  to  death  of  living  on  these  twenty 
cent  dinners."  When  I  see  men  at  the  other  end 
of  society  spending  their  two,  three,  four  and 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  119 

five  dollars  for  a  dinner,  I  realise  that  we  have  a 
fundamental  task  here,  imperative  to  the  Chris- 
tian conscience,  to  adjust  these  differences. 

That  will  be  conceded  pretty  generally  now  by 
the  intelligent  and  humane  management  of  in- 
dustry. I  remember  a  man  at  the  head  of  one 
of  the  great  steel  corporations  of  this  country 
who  was  objecting  very  seriously  to  some  of  the 
proposals  made  for  the  betterment  of  the  con- 
dition of  the  workingman.  He  said :  "  You  are 
going  to  utterly  disorganise  the  present  condi- 
tions in  the  industrial  world."  But  after  a  while 
he  made  this  significant  admission :  "  I  am  will- 
ing to  admit,  however,  that  there  is  altogether  too 
much  difference  between  the  life  of  the  president 
of  our  corporation  and  the  man  who  works  in  the 
mill  and  mine  for  us."  If  that  admission  be 
made,  it  shows  an  imperative  necessity  for  some 
sort  of  a  change,  and  demands  that  we  procure 
measures  which  will  lessen  that  difference. 
While  some  employers  of  labour  were  at  a  meet- 
ing of  an  investigating  commission  stating  that 
the  working  girl  could  live  perfectly  adequately 
on  eight  dollars  per  week,  the  executor  of  an 
estate  was  at  the  same  time  making  application 
to  a  court  for  an  increase  in  the  income  of  the 
girl  for  whom  it  was  held.  He  said  that  $12,000 
was  not  an  adequate  income  for  her  and  he  re- 
quested that  it  be  raised  by  $8,000.  The  kind 


120  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

court  raised  the  income  from  f  12,000  to  $20,000 
a  year.  As  long  as  you  have  some  girls  of  six- 
teen years  who  must  have  $20,000  a  year  to  live 
on,  you  must  have  thousands  of  others  who  have 
got  to  get  along  on  eight  dollars  a  week.  Some- 
thing must  be  done  to  bring  relief  from  this 
obvious  injustice. 

A  defensive  minimum  wage  measure  has  been 
put  around  the  group  down  at  the  bottom.  The 
principle  is  the  thing  which  must  be  considered. 
The  principle,  as  given  in  the  words  of  the  an- 
cient Book,  is  that  the  husbandman  must  be  the 
first  partaker  of  the  fruits.  Other  rights  that 
come  in  there  must  come  in  after  that  principle 
has  been  recognised  and  worked  out.  The  first 
charge  upon  industry,  from  the  standpoint  of 
Christian  ethics,  is  the  adequate  support  of  all 
those  who  are  engaged  in  that  industry.  All 
other  charges  whatsoever  come  secondary  to  that. 
Now  instead  of  conceding  that  principle,  we  are 
engaged  in  this  country  in  disputing  about  the 
methods  of  applying  it  without  regard  to  the 
cold  facts.  The  facts  are  clear  here  and  in  Eng- 
land. They  show  that  so  far  a  defensive  mini- 
mum wage  law  has  raised  the  income  of  the 
lowest  group  in  each  industry,  where  it  has  been 
applied.  In  Australia  and  New  Zealand  the 
facts  are  still  clearer,  with  a  minimum  wage 
established  not  by  legislation  but  in  each  partic- 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  121 

ular  industry  by  a  wage  board  composed  of 
workers  and  employers.  That  minimum  wage 
so  established  has  not  only  proved  an  adequate 
defence  for  the  underfed,  overworked  group  at 
the  bottom  but  has  resulted  in  a  great  uniform 
improvement  for  the  wage-earning  class  and  has 
also  resulted  profitably  to  the  employer. 

These  facts  cannot  be  gainsaid,  and  therefore 
in  this  country  we  must  come  to  realise  imme- 
diately that  the  industry  which  pays  less  than  a 
living  wage  is  a  parasitic  industry,  socially  un- 
desirable, which  the  community  cannot  afford  to 
maintain.  It  matters  not  whether  the  cause  of 
that  industry's  paying  less  than  a  living  wage 
is  the  greed  of  the  management  or  the  inefficiency 
of  the  management,  and  it  is  one  or  the  other,  as 
your  investigation  in  Massachusetts,  by  your 
Minimum  Wage  Commission  shows.  Whatever 
the  cause,  the  community  cannot  afford  to  main- 
tain a  greedy  management  or  an  absolutely 
inefficient  management.  The  social  results  of 
the  lack  of  a  living  wage,  the  results  in  disease, 
the  results  in  inefficiency,  the  results  in  delin- 
quency—  all  burdens  which  the  community  has 
to  carry  —  these  social  results  are  so  great  that 
the  community  is  justified  in  saying  to  individ- 
uals :  "  We  cannot  permit  you  to  manufac- 
ture such  results  as  this  along  with  your  prof- 
its." 


122  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

PROFIT  SHARING 

The  next  step  is  the  step  of  profit  sharing. 
That  is  being  increasingly  tried  in  this  country. 
It  was  remarkable  to  notice  the  unanimity  with 
which  the  great  industrial  managers  and  the 
financial  magnates  testified  to  the  Industrial 
Commission  that  profit-sharing  was  desirable 
and  workable  and  the  next  step.  The  value  of 
profit-sharing  depends  upon  the  kind  of  profit- 
sharing.  There  is  one  kind  that  has  proved 
absolutely  unsuccessful,  and  it  deserved  to  fail. 
It  is  not  profit-sharing.  It  is  one  of  the 
smoothest  confidence  games  ever  put  over  on  an 
unsuspicious  public,  and  that  is  the  profit- 
sharing  which  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  a 
bonus  for  increased  production.  If  more  capital 
is  put  into  an  industry,  the  charge  on  that  capi- 
tal is  taken  out  before  the  profits  are  deter- 
mined; if  more  management  is  put  into  it,  the 
charge  for  that  increased  management  is  also 
taken  out  before  profits  are  distributed.  But  not 
so  with  labour.  The  result  is  that  without  any 
increased  charge  for  capital  and  with  no  in- 
creased charge  for  management,  the  management 
says :  "  If  you  will  be  kind  enough  to  produce  a 
certain  amount  more  than  you  have  been  pro- 
ducing, we  will  be  good  enough  to  give  you  a 
certain  part  of  it."  All  that  is  made  is  made 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  123 

absolutely  by  the  workers  and  capital  simply 
appropriates  what  it  can  of  that  and  gives  the 
rest  of  it  as  a  bonus  to  the  workers.  Of  course, 
that  type  of  profit-sharing  does  not  work  out.  It 
does  not  relieve  the  friction  of  the  industrial 
procedure.  It  is  often  a  deliberate  attempt  to 
take  the  workers  away  from  the  beneficial  results 
of  organisation  and  self-expression  and  to  set  up 
a  substitute  for  organisation  on  the  part  of  the 
workers.  Concerning  that  attempt  something 
severer  needs  to  be  said,  for  it  is  socially  harm- 
ful. It  involves  certain  results  to  society  in  fric- 
tion, in  the  denial  of  the  natural  self -develop- 
ment of  the  industrial  group  which  are  danger- 
ous to  our  social  progress. 

But  there  is  a  type  of  profit-sharing  which  is 
eminently  just  and  which  has  the  proper  spirit 
and  method.  That  is  the  type  of  profit-sharing 
which  approaches  the  whole  situation  not  to  get 
further  profits  by  giving  bonuses,  but  with  a 
desire  really  to  do  justice,  with  a  desire  really  to 
find  out  what  labour  has  been  contributing  to 
the  product  which  it  has  not  been  getting.  And 
whenever  any  management  in  this  country  has 
put  up  a  plan  of  profit-sharing  with  an  attempt 
to  do  justice  to  co-workers,  the  results  have  been 
highly  desirable,  both  for  the  individual  industry 
and  for  society  as  a  whole.  It  must  involve  not 
only  an  attempt  to  do  justice  and  an  attempt  to 


124  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

discover  what  labour  really  produces;  it  must 
involve  also  the  democratic  spirit  —  the  willing- 
ness to  consult  and  co-operate  with  the  wage 
earning  group  and  give  it  a  voice  in  the  control 
of  terms  of  labour.  In  your  own  city  in  one  of 
your  great  stores,  we  have  a  genuine  attempt 
toward  a  just  and  democratic  profit-sharing  plan. 
All  such  attempts  as  that  are  steps  toward  the 
ultimate  goal.  They  are  steps  in  a  sound  and 
healthful  social  progress  and  all  who  contribute 
to  them  deserve  the  thanks  of  society. 

IS  THE  WAGE  SYSTEM  FINAL? 

But  is  that  final?  Are  we  able  to  ameliorate 
the  injustices  of  the  present  system  by  profit- 
sharing,  by  minimum  wage  laws  for  the  group  at 
the  bottom,  and  collective  bargaining  on  the  part 
of  organised  labour?  Is  the  wage  system  final? 
Is  it  the  last  thing  in  the  division  of  the  product 
of  industry?  Well,  we  might  remember  in  pass- 
ing that  there  are  few  things  that  are  final.  The 
trouble  with  most  folks  is  that  they  seem  to  think 
that  the  condition  of  life  in  which  they  happen 
to  have  been  born  and  have  grown  up  is  eternal. 
The  wage  system  is  the  essential  feature  in  the 
capitalistic  method  of  production  and  distribu- 
tion. But  the  capitalistic  method  is  only  a  tem- 
porary phase  of  the  world's  industrial  progress. 
And  the  wage  system  has  this  about  it, —  that  it 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  125 

does  not  harmonise  with  our  present  democratic 
development.  By  it,  the  members  of  the  employ- 
ing group  determine  arbitrarily  their  share  of 
the  joint  product.  This  power  is  limited,  of 
course,  as  labour  gets  the  power  to  express  itself. 
It  is  limited  also  by  legislation.  But  in  the  main 
the  central  feature  of  the  present  wage  system  is 
that  the  employer  can  say  how  much  his  reward 
shall  be  within  certain  economic  and  industrial 
limits.  It  leaves  that  power  there,  and  on  the 
other  hand  he  can  also  say  very  largely  what  the 
reward  of  those  who  work  with  him  shall  be. 
This  is  one  reason  why  the  wage  system  is  stand- 
ing out  to-day  as  inefficient  and  is  admitted  to  be 
so  by  some  of  the  large  industrial  managements 
in  this  country,  and  that  is  the  reason  for  profit- 
sharing.  The  inefficiency  lies  essentially  here, 
that  the  wage  earner  is  not  working  for  himself 
primarily  but  for  somebody  else.  He  does  not 
know  how  much  he  is  working  for  somebody 
else.  The  fact  that  he  is  working  for  somebody 
else  is  resulting  in  profit  and  gain,  and  he  does 
not  know  to  what  extent,  and  that  stings  his 
sense  of  injustice.  A  man  will  work  for  others 
with  more  zeal  than  he  will  work  for  himself  if 
he  is  working  freely  and  voluntarily  in  the  ser- 
vice of  common  good,  but  when  he  is  working 
for  some  very  limited  group,  for  some  few  indi- 
viduals all  the  time,  that  very  fact  is  working  in 


126  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

a  manner  more  or  less  effectively  to  make  him  an 
inefficient  worker. 

Then  the  wage  system  is  being  challenged  also 
because  it  is  unscientific.  Our  economists  are 
telling  us  that  it  is  not  a  -scientific  method  of 
determining  the  product  of  labour.  There  are 
more  than  fourteen  different  wage  theories 
travelling  around.  Did  you  ever  try  to  deter- 
mine what  made  wages?  Did  you  ever  go  into  a 
community  to  determine  why  unskilled  labour 
was  getting  $1.50  a  day?  The  only  answer  I  have 
ever  gotten  in  my  attempts  to  discover  this  was 
that  somebody,  years  ago,  hired  some  unskilled 
labour  and  on  a  rough  estimate  he  started  to  pay 
$1.50  a  day  for  that  unskilled  labour.  That 
wage  was  adjusted  to  the  necessities  of  that  time. 
But  because  the  labourer  got  $1.50  a  day  then, 
he  is  still  getting  it  and  he  tries  to  live  on  it. 
Cases  like  that  show  why  our  present  wage 
system  is  absolutely  unscientific.  This  one  case 
is  an  example  of  the  fact  that  the  wage  system 
is  very  largely  a  gamble.  It  is  a  gamble  both  on 
the  side  of  profit  and  of  wages.  The  fact  that 
it  is  a  gamble  makes  many  a  capitalist  go  broke 
and  leads  many  a  worker  into  sorrow.  It  is 
more  than  a  mere  unscientific  system  because  you 
are  gambling  with  human  life  and  that  is  some- 
thing which  an  ethical  people  cannot  allow  when 
it  is  not  necessary.  The  intelligence  of  the  scien- 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  127 

tific  world  refuses  any  longer  to  support  an  un- 
scientific system  and  demands  that  we  shall 
combine  our  powers  of  co-ordination.  We  will 
no  longer  send  our  ships  out  to  sea  and  take  a 
blind  chance  that  the  waters  will  be  kind  and 
bring  the  ship  safely  back  into  port ;  we  first  find 
out  what  science  has  to  say  about  the  weather. 
So  we  must  not  send  our  workers  into  the  indus- 
trial world  to  receive  what  the  blind  laws  of 
supply  and  demand  shall  bring  them.  The  in- 
telligence of  the  modern  world  must  bring  itself 
to  this  task.  It  is  shocked  by  the  idea  that 
labour  is  a  commodity  to  be  bought  and  sold  in 
the  open  market  just  the  same  as  any  other 
material,  to  be  bought  at  the  lowest  price  and 
sold  at  the  highest.  The  contention  of  labour  and 
the  fundamental  contention  of  the  Carpenter  is 
that  life  is  never  a  commodity,  that  life  is  never 
a  thing  to  be  bought  and  sold.  The  conscience 
of  mankind  in  answer  to  that  teaching  has  for- 
ever swept  out  of  the  world  chattel  slavery  and 
sometime  it  is  going  to  sweep  out  of  the  world 
wage  slavery.  For  when  men  must  work  under 
conditions  to  which  they  do  not  consent,  when 
they  must  work  under  conditions  which  they 
abhor,  that  fact  is  a  fact  of  slavery.  When  they 
are  driven  by  necessity  and  hunger  and  by  the 
organisation  of  life  to  work  under  conditions  to 
which  they  do  not  consent  and  when  those  condi- 


128  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

tions  might  be  removed  and  changed  by  a  more 
intelligent  organisation  of  the  industrial  system, 
that  fact  is  a  fact  which  cannot  be  consented  to 
by  the  conscience  that  has  been  trained  in  the 
school  of  Jesus. 

There  is  something  else  here,  in  the  wage 
system;  there  is  a  wrong  relationship  between 
the  two  parties  concerned.  They  are  trying  to 
buy  and  sell  labour,  and  the  best  you  can  do  with 
collective  bargaining  is  to  put  the  two  parties  on 
a  nearly  equal  basis  of  strength  down  behind  the 
same  table  to  determine  the  terms  of  the  bargain. 
The  result  is  either  an  armed  truce,  perhaps  to 
the  detriment  of  the  rest  of  the  community,  or 
it  is  worked  out  on  the  same  basis  that  all  trade 
is  carried  on  and  the  party  who  is  the  most 
skilled  is  the  party  which  will  take  the  advan- 
tage. "  To  the  victor  belong  the  spoils."  It 
is  a  battle  principle,  and  the  ethics  that  Jesus 
taught  insists  that  this  is  a  wrong  relationship 
between  man  and  man.  One  whose  eyes  have 
been  opened  can  never  believe  that  the  only  ulti- 
mate settlement  of  this  question  is  that  two 
groups  should  sit  around  a  table  and  see  which  is 
the  stronger  in  driving  the  better  bargain.  The 
ethics  of  Jesus  insists  that  men  should  sit  down 
not  as  antagonists,  not  as  bargain  drivers,  but  as 
brothers,  co-workers  in  the  joint  work  of  the 
world.  When  you  put  men  into  that  funda- 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  129 

mental  relationship,  then  they  seek  to  do  justice 
to  each  other  and  not  to  take  advantage  of 
each  other.  And  the  demand  of  Christian  ethics 
is  that  ultimately  all  parties  to  the  industrial 
process  should  be,  put  in  this  relationship  of 
trying  to  determine,  not  how  each  may  take 
advantage  of  the  other,  but  how  best  they  all 
together  may  serve  the  common  good,  and  be 
rewarded  according  to  their  service. 


130  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 


Q.  Is  it  possible  to  make  any  arrangement 
whereby  capital  can  possibly  receive  an  interest 
return  generally  of  even  two  cents  on  the  dollar? 

A.  Practically  that  thing  is  being  done  all  the 
time.  Ethically,  it  is  impossible. 

Q.  Ought  one  to  patronise  Five  and  Ten  Cent 
Stores  in  view  of  the  wages  paid  their  clerks? 

A.  No  man  can  be  the  guardian  of  another 
man's  conscience,  but  anybody  who  has  the  kind 
of  a  conscience  I  have  been  talking  about  ought 
to  keep  away  from  all  stores  that  are  paying 
starvation  wages. 

Q.  If  a  man  now  earning  |9  a  week,  with  a 
family,  should  come  to  you  for  advice,  this  man 
being  interested  in  social  betterment,  what  would 
you  advise  him  to  do? 

A.  I  do  not  know  anything  that  man  can  do 
except,  on  the  one  hand,  to  endeavour  to  increase 
his  individual  economic  efficiency  so  that  he  may 
try  and  get  a  larger  wage  under  the  present 
system;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  put  all  his 
power  into  the  collective  efforts  of  his  fellow- 
workers  to  improve  the  general  conditions. 

Q.  Have  not  we  too  much  education? 
Oughtn't  we  to  have  more  intelligence  and  com- 
mon-sense? 

A.  What  we  need  is  more  common-sense  edu- 
cation. 


THE  DEMAND  FOR  INCOME  131 

Q.  Would  not  the  coming  of  the  Millennium 
be  hastened  if  your  lectures  were  used  as  a  text- 
book, with  all  references  to  the  Bible  cut  out? 

A.  Well,  I  got  the  inspiration  for  my  lectures 
out  of  the  Bible. 

Q.  Would  it  be  advisable  to  merge  the  House 
and  Senate  into  one  legislative  body  and  take 
away  their  income  and  use  that  income  for  the 
relief  of  the  unemployed? 

A.  I  think  we  could  even  extend  that  proposi- 
tion and  do  without  the  services  of  a  great  many 
more  of  our  so-called  legislators  for  a  while. 

Q.  Is  the  money  system  and  the  wage  system 
synonymous?  What  substitution  would  you 
give  for  money? 

A.  They  are  not  synonymous.  Of  course,  I 
am  in  this  fortunate  position,  that  I  do  not  have 
to  suggest  practical  plans,  but  I  have  to  inculcate 
principles  and  I  leave  the  difficult  parts  of  the 
job  to  somebody  else,  and  I  think  the  most  prac- 
tical suggestion  I  have  seen  in  a  long  while  in 
that  direction  is  in  a  pamphlet,  "  The  Mechanics 
of  Socialism,"  which  you  can  secure  at  the  head- 
quarters of  the  Boston  Fabian  Club. 


VI.  VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES 

ANARCHISM   OF  VARIOUS  KINDS 

THE  strongest  criticism  that  is  levied  against  the 
labour  movement  by  those  who  are  not  in  touch 
with  it  concerns  its  use  of  violence.  It  is  con- 
demned in  the  sacred  name  of  law  and  order,  and 
law  and  order  are,  of  course,  fundamental  to  any 
organised  community.  Usually  the  criticisms  of 
labour  concerning  its  violence  rest  on  two  mis- 
conceptions. There  still  lingers  in  the  minds  of 
many  people  the  mistaken  notion  that  anarchism 
and  socialism  are,  if  not  identical,  at  least  con- 
nected. In  the  early  days  of  the  labour  move- 
ment in  Europe  it  was  composed  of  a  number  of 
disconnected  groups,  and  the  policy  was  there- 
fore more  or  less  chaotic.  Among  those  groups 
there  was  the  group  of  Terrorists  who  promoted 
the  propaganda  of  the  deed,  and  strange  to  say 
they  achieved  most  success  in  Spain  and  in 
this  country.  But  very  soon  two  groups  very 
different  in  tactics  and  philosophy  crystallised 
and  the  struggle  went  on  between  them  for  the 
control  of  the  labour  movement.  These  groups 
were  the  anarchists  and  the  Marxian  socialists. 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  133 

A  renewal  of  that  conflict  is  carried  out  in  the 
recent  development  of  syndicalism  in  Europe. 
Again  the  same  battle  has  been  fought ;  again  the 
victory  has  been  with  the  socialist  tactics,  and 
the  anarchist  group  in  Europe  are  losing  their 
latest  battle. 

Another  misconception  that  prevails  is  that 
organised  labour  is  a  sponsor  of  violence,  attempt- 
ing to  accomplish  its  ends  by  the  use  of  physical 
force,  particularly  in  its  coercion  of  the  non- 
union man.  That  is  not  the  policy  of  the  trade 
union  movement  of  any  country.  All  reputable 
leaders  of  the  trade  union  movement  not  only 
disavow  violence  for  public  consumption,  but 
sincerely  and  strongly  oppose  it  within  the 
labour  movement.  That  this  is  an  honest  judg- 
ment may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  violence 
decreases  with  the  spread  of  labour  organisa- 
tions. There  is  much  less  violence  now  than  in 
the  early  days  of  the  labour  movement.  There 
has  always  been  more  violence  connected  with 
spontaneous  strikes  of  unorganised  workers  than 
with  the  strikes  conducted  by  labour  organisa- 
tions. In  those  countries  where  trade  union 
organisations  have  grown  to  the  largest  strength, 
where  they  are  recognised  by  the  employers  and 
by  the  courts,  there  is  the  least  violence.  In 
Australia  and  New  Zealand  where  the  belief  in 
collective  bargaining  is  very  strong  you  find 


134  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

scarcely  a  trace  of  violence.  In  this  country  you 
will  find  violence  strongest  where  trade  unions 
are  weakest;  and  in  those  trades  where  trade 
unions  are  the  oldest,  where  they  have  the  most 
power,  you  will  find,  generally  speaking,  the  least 
violence.  You  can  take  the  coal  mines:  In 
those  States  where  the  operators  recognise  the 
rights  of  collective  bargaining,  you  have  a  long 
history  of  the  peaceful  conduct  of  the  coal  mining 
industry,  both  to  the  advantage  of  the  operators 
and  the  States. 

Now,  notwithstanding  all  this,  violence  does 
occur  in  the  labour  movement,  and  violence  is 
sometimes  abvocated  by  local  labour  leaders. 
Where  you  have  a  policy  of  desperation  owing  to 
the  break-down  of  organisation  in  a  trade,  where 
you  have  the  desperate  fighting  of  the  rat  in  the 
corner,  there  you  will  find  violence,  as  in  the 
McNamara  case.  Aside  from  that  exceptional 
case  I  know  of  no  instance  in  the  American 
labour  movement  when  violence  has  been  propa-^ 
gated  by  national  union  leaders.  It  is  some- 
times fostered  by  local  trade  union  leaders. 

There  are  some  reasons  why  we  have  more 
sporadic  violence  in  the  United  States  than  in 
other  countries  aside  from  the  question  of  the 
individualistic  nature  of  our  government.  One 
reason  for  that  is  the  American  spirit.  We  are 
law-makers  and  law-breakers  beyond  any  other 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  135 

people  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  As  Kipling  said 
when  writing  of  the  American  spirit,  first  we 
make  the  law  we  flout,  and  then  we  flout  the  law 
we  make.  There  is  no  one  of  us  but  what  is 
breaking  continually  more  or  less  the  statutes 
that  we  know  nothing  about  which  are  on  our 
statute  books,  and  that  breeds  a  disrespect  and 
even  a  contempt  for  the  law.  It  goes  further 
than  that.  We  have  the  anarchist  attitude  of 
the  officials  who  are  sworn  to  enforce  the  laws 
and  who  do  not  enforce  them  but  who  continually 
before  the  eyes  of  the  whole  people  violate  their 
oath  of  office.  It  is  not  very  long,  is  it,  since  in 
Boston  a  high  official  advocated,  concerning  the 
utterances  of  a  man  with  whom  he  did  not  agree, 
that  he  should  be  run  out  of  town?  Now  beside 
the  anarchy  of  officials  of  the  law,  which  is,  of 
course,  the  very  disruption  of  the  State,  labour  is 
educated  also  into  disrespect  for  the  law  by  the 
attitude  of  capital  toward  the  law.  Labour  sees 
capital  making  the  law,  and  as  labour  goes  more 
and  more  into  political  action  it  finds  the  capital- 
ist lobbies  at  the  legislature  and  sees  how  they 
work.  It  even  has  seen  the  National  Manufac- 
turers' Association  operating  at  Washington,  and 
the  whole  public  has  had  opportunity  to  trace 
the  reaching  out  of  that  influence  over  the  very 
courts  themselves.  Capital  is  continually  teach- 
ing labour  to  have  little  respect  for  the  law. 


136  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

When  capital  does  not  control  the  making  of  the 
law,  it  hires  its  expensive  attorneys  to  find  means 
to  evade  the  law. 

I  am  offering  neither  defence  nor  apology,  but 
I  am  showing  reasons,  and  if  you  want  to  stop 
violence  in  the  labour  movement  and  if  you  want 
to  establish  respect  for  the  law  the  first  step  is 
to  make  capital  keep  the  law;  and,  in  my  judg- 
ment, if  you  can  make  capital  keep  the  law,  the 
amount  of  trouble  you  will  have  from  labour  will 
be  negligible. 

Now  there  are  other  more  general  reasons 
lying  back  of  this  situation.  You  can  trace  the 
development  of  violence  in  the  world-wide  labour 
movement  according  to  a  certain  definite  law.  It 
proceeds  in  proportion  to  the  tyranny  of  govern- 
ments, in  proportion  to  the  opposition  of  employ- 
ers to  labour  movements,  and  in  proportion  also 
to  the  ignorance,  helplessness  and  desperation  of 
the  workers.  There  is  a  law  that  birds  and 
animals  throw  out  certain  defensive  weapons  in 
response  to  certain  needs  of  protection.  And  in 
the  same  way  if  we  trace  the  world-wide  develop- 
ment of  the  labour  movement  do  we  find  these 
weapons  of  defence  being  thrown  out  in  response 
to  certain  needs  of  protection.  And  the  weapon 
of  defence  becomes  before  long  the  weapon  of 
offence  and  aggression.  The  fundamental  rea- 
son for  what  violence  there  is  in  the  labour  move- 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  137 

ment  is  because  industry  is  yet  organised  on  the 
war  basis.  All  your  local  outbreaks  are  simply 
the  outcome  of  the  war  spirit  that  lies  at  the  cen- 
tre. As  Lincoln  said  concerning  the  situation 
before  the  Civil  War,  "there  is  an  irreconcilable 
antagonism  at  the  heart  of  it." 

THE  STRIKE  AND  THE  "  SCAB  " 

Now  what  about  the  local  violence  of  the  labour 
movement?  What  about  the  violence  of  strike 
conflicts?  And  it  ought  to  be  recognised  of 
course,  in  passing,  that  no  struggle  for  human 
rights  has  ever  been  won  in  history  without  vio- 
lence. That,  again,  is  no  apology,  no  defence,  no 
justification.  It  is  the  statement  of  a  fact,  and 
along  with  that  goes  this  other  fact,  that  the 
rights  for  which  labour  is  struggling  are  just  as 
fundamental  as  any  of  the  great  civil  rights  for 
which  men  have  struggled  in  the  past  and  that 
so  far  that  struggle  for  industrial  justice  and 
freedom  has  been  accompanied  by  less  violence 
than  has  the  strife  for  political  justice  and  civil 
freedom. 

There  is,  first,  the  violence  against  property, 
and  second,  the  violence  against  person.  The 
violence  against  property  in  a  strike  is  of  two 
kinds.  It  is  that  which  is  emotional,  the  mere 
outburst  of  passion  and  of  mob  spirit,  that  occurs 
when  there  has  been  an  adequate  reason  of  in  jus- 


138  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

tice  to  stir  the  mob  spirit.  Such  a  thing  as 
occurred  here  at  Lawrence  when  the  men  opened 
their  pay  envelopes  and  found  without  note  or 
warning  that  their  wages  had  been  cut.  Such 
violence  as  occurred  at  a  later  stage  in  that  strike, 
when  the  people  who  were  trying  to  break  the 
strike  saw  they  could  not  make  any  headway 
against  the  peaceful  picketing  of  the  strikers,  and 
as  they  marched  around  the  building  singing 
their  songs  they  turned  a  stream  of  icy  water 
from  the  hose  upon  them  on  that  cold  winter's 
day  and  thus  created  the  violence  which  gave 
them  an  excuse  for  bringing  the  militia  to  protect 
their  property.  A  similar  development  of  vio- 
lence you  find  in  Colorado  when  there  was  vio- 
lence against  the  property  of  the  mine  owners 
after  Ludlow  and  not  before,  after  the  miners 
had  been  wrought  up  to  a  pitch  of  frenzied  hos- 
tility by  the  death  of  their  women  and  their  chil^ 
dren  and  the  destruction  of  their  tent  colonies. 

You  also  find  some  violence  that  is  incited  to- 
day, that  is  not  emotional,  but  is  produced  by 
an  educational  process  —  produced  by  foolish 
speeches,  speeches  that  often  perhaps  are  not  in- 
tended to  produce  that  result.  The  syndicalist 
teaches  a  sabotage,  which  is  to  put  the  machine 
out  of  commission  but  must  not  destroy  it.  But 
the  average  worker  on  a  low  wage  is  not  accus- 
tomed to  philosophic  statements;  he  is  easily 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  139 

incited  to  destroy  the  machine  after  such  teaching 
as  that,  and  so  you  get  a  result  that  was  not  in- 
tended by  the  speaker  but  which  is  the  natural  re- 
sult of  teaching  doctrines  which  have  a  philo- 
sophic subtlety  not  to  be  comprehended  by  the 
people  of  the  street.  Then  you  have  another  kind 
of  violence  that  is  incited  by  capital,  the  destruc- 
tion of  property  that  is  done  for  the  sake  of  put- 
ting the  blame  upon  the  workers.  There  was  dy- 
namite planted  in  Lawrence  for  this  purpose,  and 
also  in  Los  Angeles  after  the  blowing  up  of  the 
Times  Building.  I  have  myself  in  the  last  few 
weeks  received  positive  first-hand  evidence  con- 
cerning one  of  the  historic  occasions  in  the  labour 
movements  of  this  country  when  property  was  de- 
stroyed, and  in  this  instance  life  was  taken  with 
it.  I  have  it  right  from  men  who  paid  to  have  it 
done  that  this  violence  was  committed  to  have 
something  to  put  over  upon  the  labour  organisa- 
tions before  the  courts.  There  is  a  regular  busi- 
ness also  of  furnishing  spies  to  become  members 
of  labour  organisations.  I  have  first-hand  knowl- 
edge of  that,  too,  and  I  have  had  the  honour  of  be- 
ing reported  upon  by  the  spies  that  are  main- 
tained in  certain  industrial  corporations.  You 
have  the  testimony  before  the  Industrial  Commis- 
sion, men  admitting  that  they  hired  private  detec- 
tives and  paid  them  to  work  in  their  plants  in  or- 
der that  they  might  spy  on  their  fellow-workers. 


140  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

Many  of  the  deeds  of  violence  in  American  labour 
struggles  were  done  by  those  secret  agents,  and  we 
need  to  understand  their  part  in  making  bloody 
history.  Nobody  knows  how  large  a  part  of  the 
destruction  charged  to  labour  organisation  should 
be  charged  to  these  spies.  As  for  this  whole  spy 
business  in  American  industry,  I  want  here  to 
record  my  deliberate  conviction  that  those  men 
who  cannot  manage  industry  without  the  use 
of  spies  have  thereby  proved  their  moral  and  in- 
dustrial unfitness  to  manage  industry. 

Then,  there  is  the  violence  against  person  that 
accompanies  the  strike.  There  are  two  kinds  of 
this  violence,  the  emotional  outbreak  of  the  mob 
and  the  deliberate  policy  of  the  educational  com- 
mission to  discourage  the  non-union  man  or  the 
strike-breaker.  Of  course  there  is  no  such  revul- 
sion against  the  use  of  a  little  physical  force  on 
the  part  of  the  men  who  are  close  to  the  funda- 
mentals of  life  as  there  is  in  the  refined  and  edu- 
cated group.  That  needs  to  be  taken  into 
account.  Labour  uses  a  great  deal  of  physical 
violence  within  its  own  family.  Men  who  live 
close  to  the  fundamentals  of  life,  who  pursue 
hazardous  occupations,  find  that  life  counts  but 
little,  that  capital  and  state  care  little  about  their 
lives.  And  you  must  remember  that  the  refined 
and  cultivated  group  perform  their  violence  just 
as  effectively,  but  in  other  ways.  A  labour  man 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  141 

who  does  not  want  you  to  take  his  job  may  dis- 
courage you  with  fist,  or  the  brick-bat,  or  a  piece 
of  lead-pipe ;  but  the  capitalist  who  wants  to  take 
away  your  job  comes  up  behind  and  slugs  you 
over  the  head  with  a  million  dollars,  but  he  slugs 
you  just  as  effectively.  You  may  get  over  the 
headache  of  the  man  who  slugs  you  in  the  head, 
but  your  family  will  be  a  long  time  getting  over 
the  injury  inflicted  by  the  capitalist.  Both  sides 
here  cannot  see  the  other  fellow  fairly  for  the 
beam  that  is  in  their  own  eye.  But  some  of  us 
who  are  standing  in  an  impartial  attitude  must 
see  the  thing  as  it  is  and  must  recognise  that  the 
violence  of  labour,  open  and  brutal,  and  the  vio- 
lence of  capital,  subtle  and  refined,  are  one  and 
the  same  thing,  that  both  alike  are  fundamentally 
wrong  and  that  both  can  have  no  permanent  part 
in  a  democratic  industrial  community. 

Of  course  you  know  of  the  violence  of  the  mob 
spirit,  when  the  mob  chases  the  scab,  and  that  is 
not  anything  separate  from  the  general  mob 
spirit.  It  does  not  matter  what  men  chase, 
whether  it  is  a  rabbit  or  a  man,  if  once  they  get 
started  to  chase  anything  they  lose  everything 
except  mad  passion.  In  labour  struggles  that 
mad  passion  belongs  not  simply  to  labour  but 
to  the  whole  community.  You  will  find  that  the 
hatred  of  the  scab  extends  far  beyond  the  limits 
of  the  trade  organisation.  To  the  whole  labour 


142  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

group  that  man  is  a  traitor.  From  their  stand- 
point they  view  him  just  the  same  as  the  trade 
organisation  views  the  price  cutter  or  the  pro- 
fessional organisation  (doctors,  lawyers,  minis- 
ters, etc. )  regards  the  man  who  violates  the  rules 
of  that  profession.  He  is  not  simply  a  grafter 
from  their  point  of  view,  but  he  is  also  a  traitor, 
and  a  traitor  in  war-time.  When  war  is  in  the 
atmosphere  passion  rises,  and  when  you  get  war 
in  an  industrial  community  you  get  all  the  fever 
and  passion  of  men  rising  to  their  height  against 
this  man  who  is  a  traitor  in  war-time.  There  is 
a  group  that  is  paid  to  break  strikes,  that  expects 
to  do  it  by  fighting.  And  the  whole  community, 
the  very  children  of  the  community,  will  join,  in 
the  spirit  of  persecution,  against  these  traitors. 

But  back  of  all  that,  is  of  course  the  spirit  of 
coercion,  and  the  ethics  of  labour  justify  coercion 
toward  the  undemocratic  anarchistic  individual, 
insists  that  social  welfare  as  well  as  the  good  of 
the  labour  group  justifies  coercion  toward  him. 
The  reasoning  is  sound  and  the  ethics  are  correct, 
only  when  that  is  extended  to  the  whole  commun- 
ity, when  the  majority  in  the  community  are  con- 
vinced of  the  right  to  use  coercion  toward  any 
individuals  who  are  promoting  a  socially  harmful 
policy.  That  right  of  coercion  does  not  exist  in 
any  minority  in  the  community.  It  must  first 
convince  a  majority.  You  have  to  deal  with  it  in 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  143 

the  whole  industrial  situation.  You  have  coer- 
cion exerted  against  labour  as  well  as  on  the 
behalf  of  labour,  and  if  you  are  going  to  remove 
the  spirit  of  coercion  from  one  side  of  the  labour 
question,  you  have  to  remove  it  from  the  other. 

THE  "GUNMEN" 

Another  great  cause  of  violence  in  the  organ- 
ised labour  movement,  especially  in  recent  dis- 
putes, is  the  employment  of  the  gunmen  osten- 
sibly for  protecting  property,  but  really  for  the 
purpose  of  prolonging  strikes.  These  gunmen 
are  the  death-ravens  of  the  industrial  battlefield. 
They  have  been  used  in  Colorado  and  West  Vir- 
ginia and  New  Jersey.  But  they  found  New 
Jersey  different  from  Colorado  and  now  they  are 
in  jail  to  answer  for  their  apparently  unprovoked 
attack  on  unarmed  workers.  The  immediate 
cause  of  the  extreme  violence  of  recent  labour  dis- 
putes has  been  the  brutality  of  these  gunmen. 
From  the  history  of  these  situations  I  have  found 
that  the  first  serious  acts  of  violence  were  com- 
mitted by  those  men  and  led  to  corresponding 
acts  of  violence  on  the  part  of  the  labour  group, 
against  whom  those  first  acts  had  been  com- 
mitted. It  was  back  in  the  60's  when  this  traffic 
began  when  Pinkerton  started  his  famous  detec- 
tive agency,  and  now  there  are  a  number  of  them, 
several  hundreds  of  them,  I  think,  about  the  coun- 


144  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

try,  principally  engaged  in  furnishing  spies  and 
guards  and  strike-breakers  to  industrial  corpor- 
ations. One  detective  agency  offers  to  furnish 
unlimited  forces  for  $5  a  day,  with  transporta- 
tion. This  great  business  amounts  to  the  supply- 
ing of  private  feudal  armies  to  capital.  It  is  a 
reversion  to  the  old  feudalistic  policy  when  the 
barons  had  their  private  retainers.  It  was  as  late 
as  1826  that  England  finally  replaced  the  private 
forces  of  the  aristocracy  with  the  civic  and  state 
police,  and  now  here  in  this  country  we  have  re- 
verted to  that  feudalistic  system. 

What  is  the  history  and  character  of  the  men? 
One  of  the  greatest  detectives  of  England  is  on 
record  after  investigating  the  thing  in  this  coun- 
try as  saying  that  90  per  cent,  of  these  agencies 
are  fraudulent.  William  J.  Burns,  who  ought  to 
know,  says  that  as  a  class  these  agencies  are  the 
biggest  lot  of  blackmailing  thieves  that  ever  went 
unwept  to  justice.  Other  testimony  is  on  record 
by  men  who  know  concerning  the  character  of  the 
people  who  are  enlisted  in  these  private  armies 
(and  I  have  some  first-hand  knowledge  of  my  own 
on  that  fact  also) ,  that  they  are  for  the  most  part 
ex-convicts,  criminals,  and  denizens  of  the  slums, 
with  a  sprinkling,  since  the  business  has  devel- 
oped into  warfare  on  a  general  scale,  of  soldiers 
of  fortune,  ex-soldiers  who  fight  anywhere  under 
any  flag  for  the  sake  of  adventure.  Their  busi- 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  145 

ness  is  to  commit  assaults  and  even  to  kill  union 
men.  They  are  hired  to  protect  property  but 
they  are  used  to  break  the  strike,  and  that  is  what 
they  sell  themselves  for.  In  Colorado  and  in 
West  Virginia  they  planned  attacks  on  the  labour 
forces  on  the  same  scale  as  modern  warfare. 
They  even  have  been  known  time  and  time  again 
to  commit  widespread  violence  in  order  on  the 
one  hand  to  maintain  their  own  profitable  job 
and  on  the  other  hand  to  discredit  the  strikers. 
This  is  true  concerning  the  Colorado  strikes  and 
the  railroad  strikes  of  the  90's.  In  one  case,  at 
least,  the  testimony  is  clear  that  the  violence  was 
committed  by  the  agents  of  these  private  detec- 
tive agencies,  who  even  went  so  far  as  to  identify 
themselves  by  a  certain  sign  so  that  when  the 
militia  came  into  action  they  would  not  suffer, 
but  the  strikers.  I  am  talking  history  now  and 
nobody's  opinions. 

"  This  reprehensible  system  is  responsible  for 
much  of  the  ill-feeling  and  the  bad  blood  dis- 
played by  the  working  class,"  says  the  Pennsyl- 
vania State  Commission  after  the  first  outbreak 
occasioned  by  such  agencies  in  the  Homestead 
strike  of  1892.  Commission  after  commission  and 
judge  after  judge  have  so  expressed  themselves 
in  this  country,  yet  that  business  still  goes  on  and 
even  extends  itself,  and  the  only  shadow  of  excuse 
for  it  is,  that  property  must  be  protected.  In 


146  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

every  other  civilised  State  the  protection  of  prop- 
erty is  kept  in  the  hands  of  the  State  and  not  in 
the  hands  of  private  forces  maintained  by  private 
individuals.  There  is  no  safety  for  any  of  us  if 
that  system  is  allowed  to  continue.  It  is  an  in- 
disputable spot  of  shame  and  disgrace  upon 
American  industrial  history,  and  it  is  high  time 
and  more  than  time  that  this  interstate  com- 
merce in  crime  and  death  be  absolutely  and  for- 
ever prohibited  in  this  country. 

THE   MILITIA 

But  you  say  that  then  the  militia  must  come 
in  and  the  attitude  of  the  workers  towards  the 
militia  is  no  different  than  the  attitude  towards 
the  gunmen.  In  Colorado  wrhen  the  militia  first 
came  in  the  strikers  went  to  meet  them  with  a 
brass  band,  thinking  that  the  militia  would  pro- 
tect them  from  the  brutality  and  criminality  of 
the  gunmen.  Later  their  attitude  changed  en- 
tirely toward  the  militia.  Faith  in  the  militia  is 
not  simply  destroyed,  but  the  militia  is  becoming 
to  be  hated  in  the  labour  movement,  because  la- 
bour believes  (and  the  records  show),  that  in 
most  cases  the  militia  has  been  used  not  impar- 
tially to  enforce  the  laws  of  the  State  but  on  the 
side  of  capital  to  break  the  strike.  The  testimony 
of  a  militia  man  who  served  out  at  Lawrence 
(and  it  is  on  record),  is  to  the  effect  that  they 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  147 

went  out  there  to  protect  property  and  to  serve 
one  side.  He  said :  "It  was  so  understood ;  we 
accepted  favours  from  one  side  and  never  a  word 
was  said  to  us  concerning  the  rights  of  the  other 
side."  That  is  almost  inevitable  when  you  re- 
member the  social  and  official  associations  of  the 
officers  of  the  militia  with  the  group  of  employ- 
ers. It  takes  a  good  man  to  save  himself  from 
being  influenced  by  his  friends.  And  with  the 
best  will  in  the  world  the  militia  usually  drifts 
into  the  service  of  one  side.  In  Colorado  it  even 
went  so  far  as  to  enlist  in  the  militia  the  gunmen 
who  were  being  paid  by  the  private  operators. 

If  that  danger  can  be  avoided,  yet  we  still  have 
this  peril,  the  peril  of  martial  law,  which  has  be- 
come a  bitter  fact  in  this  Country.  It  began  in 
Colorado  in  1903.  The  state  officials  informed 
the  operators  that  they  could  have  the  services  of 
the  militia  if  they  would  pay  the  expenses. 

The  militia  should  be  used  to  establish  law  and 
order  if  the  need  is  there,  but  to  put  state  troops 
at  the  services  of  one  party  to  a  conflict  if  they 
will  pay  the  bill  is  another  matter.  The  consti- 
tution of  Colorado  says  that  the  military  power 
must  always  be  subordinate  to  the  civil  power. 
Out  there  this  military  force  refused  to  obey  the 
laws  of  the  State.  They  denied  the  right  of 
habeas  corpus.  They  denied  the  right  of  free 
speech,  and  they  made  a  mine  manager  official 


148  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

censor  for  the  State  of  Colorado  in  that  section  at 
that  time.  Since  then  we  have  had  martial  law 
declared  by  military  officers  in  Colorado  and  in 
West  Virginia  without  any  regard  as  to  whether 
the  facts  justified  martial  law,  for  martial  law 
under  our  constitution  is  only  justified  when  the 
civil  power  is  inoperative.  But  in  each  case  they 
put  martial  law  into  operation  arbitrarily  and  all 
the  fundamental  rights  of  American  citizens,  the 
rights  for  which  blood  has  been  shed  in  the  past, 
were  denied  by  military  officers.  You  had  men 
thrown  into  jail  under  sentence  by  military 
tribunals.  You  had  other  men  thrown  into  jail 
without  any  charge  of  any  kind  brought  against 
them  and  held  in  jail  for  months.  Judge  Cullen 
of  the  New  York  Supreme  Court  has  said  that  if 
this  process  was  to  continue  there  was  not  a 
single  right  granted  to  the  citizens  of  this  country 
which  they  could  enjoy  and  use.  We  are  facing 
here  the  possibility  of  the  very  breakdown  of  the 
republic.  If  you  are  to  have  militarism  express- 
ing itself  at  the  centre  of  our  industrial  commun- 
ities, you  have  no  guarantee  for  the  future  of 
your  republic. 

You  ought  to  remember  that  sooner  or  later 
labour  is  going  to  have  the  controlling  voice  in 
the  commonwealth,  and  I  ask  you  this,  What  is 
going  to  happen  in  that  day  if  labour  has  been 
taught  by  a  process  of  military  dictatorship  that 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  149 

the  constitutional  rights  of  citizens  can  be  super- 
seded by  arbitrary  authority?  You  say  prop- 
erty must  be  protected  by  the  State.  It  must  be. 
Property  must  be  protected.  But  there  is  not  a 
case  where  I  have  not  found  that  the  destruction 
of  property  was  preceded  by  something  vastly 
more  significant,  the  destruction  of  life.  The  de- 
struction of  human  life  in  the  industrial  world 
has  been  the  occasion  for  the  destruction  of  prop- 
erty. And  is  the  state  to  maintain  a  brutal 
armed  force,  for  the  sake  of  men  who  have  no  re- 
gard for  the  vital  human  fabric  of  the  State? 

When  the  State  considers  that  its  first  duty, 
more  fundamental  even  than  the  protection  of 
property,  is  the  protection  of  human  life,  it  will 
not  have  to  concern  itself  with  the  protection  of 
property,  for  that  will  take  care  of  itself.  And 
the  State  that  will  develop  itself  constructively  to 
protect  and  develop  human  life  will  not  have  to 
adopt  repressive  measures  for  the  protection  of 
property.  That  is  the  way  out  of  the  situation, 
and  it  is  the  only  way  out.  In  the  last  analysis 
neither  the  State  nor  industry  can  rest  upon  the 
constraint  of  force,  and  the  attempt  to  use  force 
by  either  side  in  the  industrial  struggle  is  a  con- 
fession that  justice  and  reason  have  not  been 
tried,  or  will  not  avail.  In  the  last  analysis  both 
industry  and  the  State  can  rest  on  no  other 
ground  than  the  ground  of  reason. 


150  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

Q.  What  do  you  think  of  Dr.  Eliot's  definition 
of  a  strike-breaker? 

A.  I  think  that  Dr.  Eliot,  like  a  good  many 
of  the  rest  of  us  college  professors,  is  talking 
about  something  he  does  not  understand  very 
well. 

Q.  Would  not  the  Swiss  military  order  be 
worth  having  in  this  country? 

A.  Well,  if  you  have  got  to  have  any  that 
would  be  perhaps  the  least  objectionable.  I  do 
not  think  you  have  to  have  any  in  this  country. 

Q.  If  the  Socialist  belief  that  property  should 
be  enjoyed  by  its  products  is  logical,  why  should 
not  the  machine  which  is  destroying  life  be  de- 
stroyed? 

A.  Both  to-day  and  the  other  day  I  thought  I 
made  myself  clear.  If  a  machine  is  destroying 
folks  that  is  not  a  reason  for  destroying  the 
machine,  but  that  is  a  reason  for  stopping  the  de- 
struction of  the  machine  and  harnessing  it  up 
to  social  welfare. 

Q.  Can  labour  unions  themselves  offset  the 
results  of  the  acts  of  strike-breakers  by  them- 
selves organising  a  force? 

A.  I  was  in  a  manufacturing  town  last  year 
where  during  a  strike  twenty  union  men  were 
held  responsible  for  order  and  for  the  protection 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  151 

of  property.  There  was  no  violence  or  destruc- 
tion of  property  in  that  town. 

Q.  Can  the  speaker  give  us  any  information  as 
to  the  influence  of  women  as  evidenced  in  Colo- 
rado? 

A.  They  did  one  thing.  They  compelled  the 
putting  of  the  situation  up  to  Washington  and 
the  bringing  in  of  the  Federal  troops  to  replace 
both  the  gunmen  and  the  state  police. 

Q.  What  part  have  the  newspapers  played  in 
these  industrial  controversies? 

A.  In  several  outstanding  instances  they  have 
misled  the  public  by  reports  that  were  untrue  and 
by  reports  that  were  biassed  and  only  half  true, 
and  the  reason  for  that,  of  course,  is  the  associa- 
tion of  the  news  gathering  agency  locally  with 
the  employing  groups.  The  news  comes  to  the 
reporter  from  that  side  with  which  he  is  asso- 
ciated, and  that  is  the  side  he  turns  out. 

Q.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  a  scab  is  himself  a 
worker  and  supports  himself  and  family,  is  it 
fair  for  the  union  to  hold  the  scab  as  it  does? 

A.  If  a  man  is  consciously  and  deliberately 
putting  his  own  self-interest,  his  own  little  com- 
fort up  above  the  good  of  a  whole  group  or  a 
whole  class,  he  is  a  traitor  to  the  common  good. 
It  is  not  a  question  of  his  being  a  traitor  to  the 
union. 


132  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

Q.  If  the  law  and  the  constitution  are  being 
used  to  destroy  the  rights  of  labour,  why  do  you 
say  that  labour  should  regard  the  law  and  con- 
stitution? 

A.  My  statement  was  that  the  danger  was  that 
labour  should  coine  to  disregard  constitutional 
rights.  Law  can  be  used  to  defend  labour.  It 
can  be  used  to  defend  the  destruction  of  labour, 
but  of  course  the  fundamental  rights  of  any  group 
can  only  be  worked  out  by  itself. 

Q.  I  wonder  if  professors  even  think  or  remem- 
ber that  their  good  salaries  are  often,  and  gener- 
ally come  very  largely,  from  the  hand-labour  of 
business  men  and  manufacturers?  I  could  show 
you  that  manufacturers  have  a  hard  time,  with 
taxes  increasing  annually,  and  all  kinds  of 
troubles.  Men  do  not  do  as  much  in  eight  hours 
as  in  nine.  They  always  do  the  very  least  possi- 
ble and  have  no  mercy  on  their  employers.  No 
fool  manufacturer  can  make  both  ends  meet. 
They  require  brains,  real  brains.  Investigate  a 
little  and  you  will  know  more  than  you  now  do. 

A.  If  we  were  inclined  to  forget  that  first  fact, 
we  should  be  constantly  reminded  of  it,  and  we 
are.  But  we  remember  this  fact  also.  We  re- 
member that  the  money  that  supports  us  conies 
not  only  from  the  managers  of  industry,  but  from 
the  workers  in  industry.  And  we  remember 
therefore  that  we  are  under  obligations  to  both 


VIOLENCE  AND  ITS  CAUSES  153 

of  them,  and  God  helping  us  will  discharge  that 
obligation  to  both  of  them  to  the  best  of  our 
ability.  I  do  have  plenty  of  sympathy  with  the 
manufacturers.  They  have  demands  of  labour 
on  one  side  of  them  and  the  control  of  capital 
with  its  demands  on  the  other  side  of  them,  and 
if  we  have  any  message  for  anybody  we  have  a 
message  for  them,  that  they  shall  use  all  the 
powers  they  have  in  joining  with  labour  in  trans- 
forming matters.  In  regard  to  men  doing  the 
least  possible  and  having  no  mercy  on  their  em- 
ployers, of  course  that  man  has  investigated  just 
his  own  business.  He  has  not  gone  far  enough. 
I  have  learned  this  to  be  a  fundamental  rule  of 
life,  whether  it  is  in  teaching  or  preaching  or  in 
industry,  you  get  back  from  men  the  same  atti- 
tude with  which  you  face  them.  If  you  try  to 
skin  them,  they  will  try  to  skin  you,  and  if  you  1  / 
try  to  treat  them  with  justice  and  appreciation^ 
they  will  respond  in  the  same  spirit  to  you. 


VII.     LABOR  AND  THE  LAW 

THIS  is  not  a  technical  discussion.  It  is  simply 
an  attempt  to  present  broadly  the  case  of  labour 
against  the  law,  from  the  standpoint  of  an  obser- 
ver who  will  be  impartial  if  he  can  and  who  is 
entirely  unversed  in  the  subtlety  of  legal  techni- 
calities. 

Labour's  first  contact  with  the  law  is  usually 
at  the  business  end  of  a  policeman's  club.  It 
concerns  the  right  to  picket.  The  usual  instruc- 
tions to  pickets  are  that  they  shall  proceed 
singly,  or  in  pairs,  with  their  hands  in  their 
pockets,  shall  keep  moving  and  shall  use  nothing 
but  speech.  Well,  the  best  of  instructions  are 
not  always  carried  out,  and  while  peaceful  pick- 
eting is  recognised  by  the  courts  and  laws  of  a 
good  many  cities  and  states,  picketing  does,  of 
course,  often  lead  to  disturbance,  and  that  is 
where  the  law  may  properly  step  in.  But  in 
determining  where  the  disturbance  begins  you 
have  to  look  for  it  inside  the  zone  of  discretionary 
enforcement  of  the  law  at  the  hands  of  officials. 
Oftentimes  the  right  of  peaceful  picketing  is 
denied  and  violence  is  provoked  by  the  police. 
In  the  city  of  Paterson  in  1913  the  local  papers 

154 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  155 

which  were  bitterly  opposed  to  both  the  strike 
and  its  leaders,  admitted  and  even  claimed  with 
pride  that  there  had  been  less  violence  in  that 
strike  than  in  any  strike  of  its  size  in  the  history 
of  this  country.  Yet  there  were  during  that 
strike  1200  arrests  and  300  punishments  for 
picketing,  which  led  a  more  or  less  conservative 
New  York  journal  to  liken  that  prosecuting  attor- 
ney and  district  judge  to  Jeffreys  and  his  famous 
hanging  sheriff. 

Now  there  are  other  groups  interested  in  the 
arbitrary  and  unconstitutional  exercise  of  police 
power.  Those  groups  interested  in  moral  reform 
constantly  come  against  that  obstacle,  and  it 
would  be  well  for  both  them  and  labour  if  they 
would  join  forces  and  resist  with  equal  vehe- 
mence the  unconstitutional  exercise  of  police 
authority.  When  the  police  in  Chicago  found 
that  by  mistake  they  had  Miss  Starr  in  jail  for  no 
crime  at  all  but  peaceful  picketing  they  were  in 
great  haste  to  let  her  go.  They  found  they  had 
burned  their  fingers.  But  she  would  not  be  let 
go.  And  if  the  same  treatment  that  is  accorded 
to  labour  for  peaceful  picketing  were  accorded 
to  people  in  what  is  sometimes  erroneously  sup- 
posed to  be  the  higher  walks  of  society,  we  should 
have  a  good  many  more  disturbances  than  we 
now  have. 

When  labour  appears  in  court  it  faces  the  same 


156  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

arbitrary  use  of  prerogative,  in  this  case  exer- 
cised by  the  judiciary.  It  faces  the  injunction; 
it  faces  the  right  of  the  judge  to  make  the  law, 
interpret  the  law  and  determine  the  punishment 
—  the  right  which  has  been  taken  from  the  exec- 
utive and  legal  departments  of  the  government 
and  which  cannot  be  allowed  to  remain  in  the 
judiciary  branch  of  the  government.  Does  any- 
body believe  for  a  moment  that  a  jury  of  their 
peers,  fairly  drawn,  would  have  sentenced 
Gompers  and  Mitchell  to  jail  for  publishing  that 
"  We  don't  patronise  "  list?  And  when  one  con- 
siders from  what  class  of  society  judges  come  — 
with  no  imputation  of  their  sincerity  —  when  one 
considers  that  practically  their  whole  associa- 
tions have  been  with  one  side  of  this  labour  con- 
troversy, what  justice  can  you  have  when  an 
injunction  prerogative  with  the  power  to  punish 
is  left  in  the  hands  of  the  judge  in  labour  cases? 
It  may  be  legal  etiquette  to  write  injunctions  in 
the  office  of  the  attorney  for  the  plaintiff,  but 
when  that  is  done  in  labour  cases  the  outcome 
works  a  great  injustice  for  labour.  The  funda- 
mental principles  of  the  English  law,  according 
to  an  authority  of  this  city,  is  that  the  judge  is 
simply  the  voice  of  the  jury  — (that  is,  in  certain 
groups  of  cases)  — that  it  is  not  his  province  to 
take  out  of  the  hands  of  the  jury  the  fundamental 
disposition  of  the  accused,  and  the  attempt  to 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  157 

assume  that  right  is  contrary  to  the  development 
of  English  Civil  and  Criminal  Procedure.  That 
attempt  must  be  strongly  resisted  by  all  lovers 
of  liberty.  The  fundamental  principle  of  the 
right  to  be  tried  by  a  jury  of  one's  peers  where 
one's  life  or  liberty  is  held  in  peril  through  vio- 
lation of  the  law  is  a  right  which  every  other 
group,  as  much  as  labour,  is  interested  in  de- 
fending. 

When  labour  comes  into  court  before  a  jury  the 
trouble  is  it  does  not  very  often  face  a  jury  of  its 
peers.  Packed  juries  do  exist.  The  attorney - 
general  of  the  last  administration  made  accusa- 
tion to  the  President  concerning  the  activities  of 
one  of  those  private  detective  agencies  in  influenc- 
ing juries.  Even  where  juries  are  honestly 
drawn,  with  the  present  class  struggle  and  class 
conflict  you  do  not  always  get  a  jury  of  your 
peers.  That  phrase  had  a  distinct  meaning  when 
it  originated  in  feudal  times.  Would  a  baron 
submit  to  trial  by  a  jury  of  serfs?  See  what 
happened  in  the  French  Revolution  when  the 
class  that  had  long  been  subjected  to  class  punish- 
ment got  control  of  the  courts  and  laws  in  their 
own  hands.  And  those  people  who  are  interested 
now  in  days  of  class  conflict  and  class  struggle 
in  administering  the  law  from  the  standpoint  of 
class  interest  might  stop  to  remember  what  will 
happen,  if  that  policy  be  persisted  in,  when  cap- 


158  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

ital  comes  into  court  to  be  accused  by  a  labour 
district  attorney,  to  be  tried  by  a  labour  judge, 
and  sentenced  by  a  labour  jury. 

THE   BOYCOTT 

Labour  has  a  controversy  with  the  law  over  the 
question  of  the  boycott.  Now  the  boycott  is  an 
ancient  weapon.  It  was  used  in  this  country,  in 
this  State,  by  the  Sons  and  Daughters  of  Liberty 
against  British  goods.  It  has  been  used  by  em- 
ployers against  union  labour.  It  has  been  used 
by  trade  associations  against  members  who  cut 
prices.  I  have  even  known  it  to  be  advocated 
against  preachers.  I  have  in  my  possession  a 
copy  of  a  letter  by  the  secretary  of  one  of  the 
state  manufacturers'  associations  in  this  country 
which  calls  upon  its  members  to  cease  supporting 
preachers  who  talk  against  the  interests  of  that 
association.  There  is  the  positive  boycott,  the 
boycott  that  is  turned  around  and  used  the  other 
way,  the  consumers'  label  and  the  union  label 
which  constrains  its  members  to  trade  with  one 
another.  The  boycott  in  the  sense  of  its  use  by 
labour  though  usually  means  either  a  simple  ab- 
stention from  dealing  with  another  member,  and 
the  endeavour  to  persuade  others  so  to  abstain. 
That  is  the  primary  boycott  and  it  is  usually  held 
legal  by  our  courts  unless  it  involves  violence. 
Then  there  is  the  secondary  boycott  which  endeav- 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  159 

ours  to  induce  others  to  abstain  from  dealings 
with  certain  parties  by  using  coercive  or  intim- 
idating measures,  and  that  has  usually  been  held 
illegal,  although  the  Supreme  Court  of  California 
declines  to  make  any  distinction  between  the 
primary  and  the  secondary  boycott  unless  the 
element  of  coercion  comes  in.  England  and  Ger- 
many have  long  recognised  the  boycott  as  a  legal 
privilege  of  trade  unions.  In  this  country  the 
ground  of  action  against  the  boycott  as  voiced 
by  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  in  its 
decisions  against  the  boycott,  that  is,  such  a  boy- 
cott as  was  used  in  the  Danbury  Hatters'  case, 
is  that  it  publishes  certain  facts,  to  the  detriment 
of  the  property  or  the  good  name  of  another  per- 
son, and  therefore  the  courts  have  held  that  the 
right  of  free  speech  and  free  press  ought  to  be 
abridged.  In  one  notorious  case  the  dissenting 
judge  voiced  this  opinion :  He  said,  "  The  court 
has  no  such  power  "  —  that  is,  to  abridge  free 
speech  and  free  press  in  order  to  protect  property 
rights. —  "  It  is  a  fact  that  practically  all  of  the 
encroachment  upon  the  rights  of  property  up  to 
date  have  been  made  by  the  courts  themselves, 
the  sworn  defenders  of  the  Constitution."  And 
when  we  remember  that  no  government  has  ever 
long  survived  the  denial  of  the  right  of  free 
speech  and  free  press,  if  there  is  any  of  the  spirit 
of  '76  left  in  this  country  there  will  be  some  other 


ICO  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

people  ready  to  go  to  jail  along  with  labour  in 
defence  of  those  fundamental  rights. 

You  have  a  social  question  here  as  well  as  one 
that  concerns  the  interests  of  labour.  Suppose 
the  facts  which  ought  to  be  printed  and  spoken 
are  facts  which  the  public  must  know?  Suppose 
they  are  facts  concerning  the  adulteration  of  food 
or  fabric?  Suppose  they  are  facts  concerning 
the  destruction  of  the  very  fabric  of  society,  the 
injury  of  the  life  of  the  workers?  Must  not  the 
public  know  those  facts?  Is  not  such  knowledge 
superior  to  any  injury  which  might  accrue  to  the 
property  or  reputation  of  those  who  have  been 
doing  this  to  the  injury  of  the  commonwealth? 
And  those  who  care  for  a  safe  and  sound  social 
progress  will  defend  here  the  right  of  publication 
in  the  proper  manner  of  all  facts  which  are 
socially  necessary  to  be  known. 

It  has  been  found  in  England  and  Germany 
that  the  use  of  the  boycott  has  diminished  with 
its  legalising.  The  same  result  would  surely 
follow  in  this  country.  If  it  be  not  legalised,  it 
will  be  used  secretly  in  a  much  more  dangerous 
fashion,  even  as  the  black-list  is  used.  The  black- 
list is  permitted  by  law  even  more  than  the  boy- 
cott, and  yet  the  black-list  is  used  more  fre- 
quently in  this  country  than  the  boycott  is  used. 
The  white-list  can  be  used  just  as  effectively. 
Labour  recognises  the  possibilities  of  the  unjust 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  161 


use  of  the  boycott  in  righting  injustice,  and  its 
leaders  have  spoken  against  its  unjust  use. 
There  have  been  few  cases  in  recent  industrial 
uses  where  it  has  been  used  for  any  other  reason 
than  to  right  injustice.  In  one  case  where  a  per- 
son was  boycotted  the  trade  of  the  person 
attacked  was  increased  rather  than  diminished 
by  the  unjust  and  unfair  use  of  the  boycott,  The 
abuse  of  the  boycott  can  be  met  and  suppressed 
under  the  existing  criminal  law.  And  if  it  be 
legalised  in  a  proper  manner  it  will  result  in  a 
much  better  type  of  industrial  struggle  than  will 
prevail  under  its  suppression. 

CONSPIRACY 

The  boycott  like  many  other  labor  measures  is 
sometimes  proceeded  against  on  the  ground  of 
conspiracy,  and  here  again  is  labour's  contro- 
versy with  the  law.  The  common  law  against 
conspiracy  was  used  in  England  originally 
against  all  labour  organisations.  They  were 
held  to  be  unlawful,  but  in  1875  England  legal- 
ised trade  unions  and  took  them  out  from  under 
the  conspiracy  laws.  But  in  this  country  we 
have  still  persisted  in  the  doctrine  that  an  act 
which  is  lawful  when  performed  by  one  individ- 
ual becomes  unlawful  when  performed  by  a  group 
acting  in  a  concerted  manner.  Several  States 
have  modified  the  common  law  conspiracy  doc- 


162  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

trine  in  relation  to  labour  organisations.  Yet 
when  two  States  have  by  statute  declared  that 
offences  not  indictable  singly  are  not  indictable 
when  done  in  concert,  there  have  been  recent 
attempts  to  extend  the  law  of  conspiracy.  It  has 
been  so  extended  in  the  recent  decision  in  the 
Danbury  Hatters'  case  notwithstanding  the  fact 
that  the  records  at  Washington  show  that  it  was 
the  purpose  of  those  who  drew  that  law  that  it 
should  not  apply  to  labour  organisations.  In 
West  Virginia  and  in  Colorado  indictments  have 
been  drawn  against  the  officers  of  the  United 
Miners  for  conspiracy  in  restraint  of  trade.  But 
'the  most  daring  attempt  to  extend  the  law  of 
conspiracy  to  labour  is  in  a  recent  case  in  Texas 
where  some  I.  W.  W.  men  were  tried  on  a  con- 
spiracy charge  because  of  a  riot  which  grew  out 
of  some  speeches  which  some  of  them  had  made 
while  others  had  not  been  present  at  the  meetings. 
The  prosecuting  attorney  took  the  ground  that 
the  law  of  conspiracy  held  a  man  responsible  for 
acts  done  by  an  organisation  to  which  he  be- 
longed even  though  he  was  not  present  when  they 
were  done,  and  even  though  they  were  contrary  to 
the  expressed  purpose  of  the  organisation  for 
which  he  had  joined  it.  A  part  of  labour's  case 
against  the  court  is  that  justice  sometimes  de- 
pends upon  whether  you  have  money  to  defend 
you  or  not.  Those  men  who  were  tried  in  that 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  163 

case  had  no  money  for  a  lawyer  and  so  the  prose- 
cuting attorney  got  by  with  his  charge  and  they 
were  given,  I  think,  fifteen  or  eighteen  years  each. 
But  when  the  next  group  came  into  the  court 
their  fellow-workers  had  provided  for  a  lawyer. 
Those  men  went  to  jail  for  three  and  six  months. 
Now  the  legal  mind  will  have  hard  work  to 
convince  the  common-sense  mind  that  things 
which  are  right  when  done  singly  are  wrong  when 
done  collectively.  That  is  simply  an  outworn 
theory  of  a  purely  feudalistic  period  of  civilisa- 
tion. To-day  group  action,  collective  action,  is 
compulsory,  and  the  question  which  has  been 
raised  by  one  of  our  labour  journals  concerning 
the  recent  attempt  to  extend  the  law  of  conspir- 
acy needs  to  be  answered.  "  What  about  the  con- 
spiracy of  those  who  thus  conspire  to  use  the  law 
of  conspiracy?  "  Those  who  are  trying  to  limit 
collective  action,  to  administer  the  laws  of  earlier 
and  simpler  days  so  as  to  check  and  hinder  proper 
action  for  the  improvement  of  social  conditions, 
are  not  simply  conspiring  to  persecute  and 
oppress  labour,  they  are  interfering  with  the 
proper  development  of  social  progress.  And  the 
peril  of  their  course  is  that  if  approved  and  per- 
sisted in  by  those  who  have  their  hands  upon  the 
laws  and  the  courts,  it  leaves  as  the  only  avail- 
able method  to  remove  the  obstruction,  the  unde- 
sirable method  of  physical  force. 


164  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

FREEDOM  OF  CONTRACT 

Labour's  next  controversy  with  the  law  con- 
cerns the  ancient  doctrine  of  freedom  of  contract, 
and  that  is,  of  course,  the  chief  bar  to  the  enforce- 
ment of  labour  legislation.  The  doctrine  of  free- 
dom of  contract  has  been  used  to  nullify  labour 
laws  in  State  after  State.  It  has  been  used  to 
nullify  laws  prohibiting  company  stores.  It  has 
been  used  to  throw  out  laws  protecting  the  health 
of  women  from  over-labour.  On  that  ground  a 
law  prohibiting  the  night  work  of  women,  which 
has  been  prohibited  in  Europe  for  years,  was  de- 
clared unconstitutional  in  New  York  State.  It 
has  been  used  to  declare  unconstitutional  laws 
for  the  health  of  the  workers,  "  safety -first  laws," 
and  also  employers'  liability  laws.  All  these 
have  been  checked  in  this  country,  hindered  and 
held  back  by  this  doctrine  of  freedom  of  con- 
tract. In  the  State  of  Illinois,  regarding  the 
second  ten-hour  law  there,  two  working  women 
came  into  court  to  indicate  that  the  law  forbid- 
ding them  to  work  more  than  ten  hours  was  un- 
constitutional. One  testified  that  she  had 
worked  for  a  certain  firm,  which  of  course  really 
brought  the  suit,  for  thirty-two  years,  and  after 
thirty 4wo  years  of  labour  (and  she  was  the  most 
efficient  worker  in  the  room ) ,  she  could  not  earn 
enough  to  support  herself  and  sister  without 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  165 

working  more  than  ten  hours  a  day.  Freedom  of 
contract  might  be  constitutional  if  it  simply 
meant  freedom  to  destroy  one's  self,  but  freedom, 
in  the  doing  of  that,  to  destroy  a  whole  labour 
group  is  impossible.  There  is  now  a  case  before 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  trying  to 
declare  unconstitutional  the  minimum  wage  law 
in  the  State  of  Oregon  on  the  doctrine  of  freedom 
of  contract,  and  the  plaintiffs  advance  the  novel 
statement  that  low  wages  have  nothing  whatever 
to  do  with  health  and  morals. 

This  doctrine  of  freedom  of  contract  is  written 
into  our  Constitution,  but  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  was  written  at  a  time  when  the 
whole  civilised  world  was  reacting  against  feud- 
alism, when  the  swing  of  the  pendulum  had  car- 
ried both  law  and  philosophy  to  the  most  absurd 
extreme  of  individualism,  when  even  preachers 
were  holding  that  it  was  too  bad  that  children 
should  be  destroyed  in  the  factories,  but  that  all 
you  could  do  was  to  pray  the  good  God  to  take 
them  out  of  life  as  quickly  as  possible.  And  in 
addition  to  the  reaction  of  Europe  against  the 
constraint  of  feudalism  we  had  the  pioneer  spirit 
here  reacting  against  the  suppressions  of  the 
Colonial  period.  At  tjiat  time  in  this  country, 
and  at  the  very  time  when  industrialism  was 
forcing  Europe  away  from  the  laissez  faire  phil- 
osophy, at  that  time  freedom  of  contract  was 


166  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

rigidly  written  into  constitutional  form  here. 
But  what  was  then  a  philosophic  doctrine  is  ab- 
solutely contrary  now  to  economic  fact.  There 
is  no  freedom  of  contract  to-day  for  the  individ- 
ual worker  in  those  industries  which  are  highly 
capitalised  and  concentrated.  Freedom  of  con- 
tract is  purely  a  legal  fiction  to-day.  As  Mrs. 
Robins  says,  "  Every  one,  except  judges  and 
lawyers,  knows  that  freedom  of  contract  can  exist 
only  between  parties  on  an  economic  equality." 
As  long  as  you  have  economic  inequality,  you 
have  economic  restraint.  Economic  restraint  is 
a  fact,  and  it  is  more  powerful  to-day  in  certain 
groups  of  society  than  any  other  kind  of  re- 
straint. Now  you  can  lessen  that  economic  re- 
straint by  legal  restraint,  and  when  you  lessen 
economic  restraint  by  legal  restraint  instead  of 
interfering  with  freedom  of  contract  you  are  giv- 
ing a  direct  expression  of  freedom  of  contract  and 
individual  liberty.  It  is  shown  both  in  matters 
of  short  hour  legislation  and  liability  legislation, 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  interference  of  the  police 
power  for  social  welfare  that  freedom  of  contract 
is  thoroughly  established  now  in  the  courts. 
Economic  restraint  received  its  death  blow  with 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court  decision  con- 
cerning the  ten  hour  law  in  Oregon,  and  since 
then  we  have  had  decision  of  state  courts  on  short 
hour  legislation,  which  simply  shot  that  old  doc- 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  167 

trine  so  full  of  holes  that  nobody  but  a  corpora- 
tion lawyer  can  recognise  it.  It  must  be  recog- 
nised that  freedom  of  contract,  individual  liberty, 
is  subordinate  to  social  welfare  and  that  only  by 
so  subordinating  it  can  you  attain  the  highest  de- 
gree of  individual  freedom  and  liberty. 

PROPERTY   RIGHTS  VS.   HUMAN   RIGHTS 

The  question  of  freedom  of  contract  bridges 
into  still  another  question,  and  that  is  the  ques- 
tion of  the  whole  legal  status  of  property,  the 
comparative  status  before  the  law  of  human 
rights  and  property  rights.  Labour's  funda- 
mental case  against  the  law  is  not  so  much  with 
the  administration  and  interpretation  of  the  law 
as  it  is  with  the  law  itself.  We  may  have  to  deal 
with  ancient  judges  still  holding  to  outworn  phil- 
osophy, but  that  is  not  the  significant  situation. 
We  may  have  to  deal  with  judge-made  laws  at 
the  hands  of  judges  whose  whole  association  and 
whose  whole  sympathies  have  been  with  the  capi- 
talist and  the  employing  group  rather  than  with 
the  labour  group,  and  who  notwithstanding  all 
their  sincerity  and  honesty  are  nevertheless  in- 
fluenced by  their  associations  and  their  sympa- 
thies as  well  as  by  their  ignorance  of  the  facts  of 
the  situation.  But  we  have  something  more 
fundamental  still.  There  is  a  different  status  be- 
fore the  court  in  most  cases  for  property  than  for 


168  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

human  rights.  That  appears  over  and  over 
again.  As  one  of  our  legal  authorities  has  said, 
"  the  legal  attitude  toward  pressure  exerted  by 
business  corporations  for  familiar  ends  of  ac- 
quisition is  very  different  from  that  toward  press- 
ure exerted  by  the  union  for  the  novel  end  of  a 
standard  of  living." 

So  far  the  courts  have  held  the  right  of  free 
speech  as  less  important  than  property  rights. 
In  other  words,  the  life  of  the  worker  who  is  try- 
ing to  protect  himself  by  publishing  certain  facts 
counts  for  less  with  the  court  than  the  right  of 
property  to  protect  itself.  The  extreme  of  that, 
of  course,  was  the  decision  in  New  York  render- 
ing unconstitutional  the  workmen's  compensa- 
tion law  on  the  ground  that  it  was  taking  away 
the  property  of  the  employer  without  due  process 
of  law.  The  Constitution  says  that  no  man's  life, 
liberty,  or  property  shall  be  destroyed  without 
due  process  of  law,  and  yet  in  all  the  decisions  of 
the  courts  there  is  no  instance  where  that  clause 
in  the  Constitution  has  been  invoked  to  protect 
the  life  and  liberty  of  the  worker.  Take  that  sit- 
uation, which  is  simply  a  survival  of  feudalistic 
times,  where  the  governor  can  himself  call  out  the 
troops  and  declare  a  state  of  military  law.  Do 
you  know  where  that  most  vital,  that  most  su- 
preme of  all  powers,  do  you  know  a  case  where 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  169 

that  has  been  used  to  protect  the  life  and  liberty 
of  the  workers?  It  has  been  used  sometimes,  as 
it  must  be  used,  to  protect  property.  There  have 
been  cases  where  the  life  and  liberty  of  the  work- 
ers has  been  just  as  vitally  injured  as  ever  the 
property  of  the  employers  was  and  that  supreme 
authority  has  never  been  used  to  protect  it. 

Come  down  to  a  concrete  case  and  you  get  the 
same  thing  in  more  outstanding  form.  Here  is  a 
man  over  in  New  York  who  wrecks  a  business  and 
along  with  it  wrecks  the  savings  of  his  employes, 
and  he  gets  what  —  a  fine,  was  it  not?  Here  is 
a  man  in  California  who  steals  a  dollar  and  he 
has  gone  to  jail  for  five  years  for  it.  Now  it  isn't 
any  use  inveighing  against  the  judge  of  the  court, 
it  is  something  fundamentally  wrong  with  the 
law  here  that  we  have  to  deal  with.  It  is  the  very 
conception  of  the  law  itself.  Here  are  some 
workers  out  in  a  Western  State  who  deported 
some  people  whom  they  thought  undesirable  citi- 
zens, and  they  have  gone  to  jail  for  kidnapping. 
But  there  are  cases  right  here  where  employers 
have  deported  by  physical  force  labour  leaders 
whom  they  considered  undesirable  citizens,  but 
they  have  not  been  found  guilty  of  kidnapping 
and  I  have  not  seen  the  legal  process  invoked  to 
that  end.  The  United  States  government  used 
all  the  power  at  its  command  (as  it  properly 


170  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

should  have  used  it),  in  hunting  down  everybody 
concerned  with  that  conspiracy  of  violence  that 
was  concocted  at  Indianapolis  in  the  Structural 
Iron  Workers'  Union  and  the  packed  juries  of 
Colorado  (the  evidence  is  before  the  commission, 
it  is  not  my  word  you  have  to  take  for  it,  that 
there  were  packed  juries  in  Colorado  just  the 
same  as  the  packed  grand  jury  of  Calumet)  have 
been  indicting  labour  leader  after  labour  leader 
for  violence  and  conspiracy  and  so  discrediting 
them  before  the  whole  public,  but  I  have  not  seen 
the  machinery  of  the  law,  either  state  or  Federal, 
called  into  action  to  hunt  down  and  trace  out 
those  who  planned  the  conspiracy  of  violence  and 
assault  upon  the  miners  of  Colorado. 

This  fundamental  difference  before  the  law  is 
responsible  almost  entirely  for  labour's  attitude 
toward  the  law,  and  the  peril  of  the  situation  is 
that  the  attitude  increasingly  becomes  one  of  dis- 
trust and  hostility.  In  a  Western  state  an  I.  W. 
W.  leader  was  before  the  court  for  contempt,  on 
the  charge  that  on  the  street  he  had  made  a 
speech  and  said,  "  To  hell  with  the  court  and  the 
judge."  He  came  into  court  and  the  judge  asked 
him  if  he  wanted  a  lawyer.  He  said,  "  No,  it 
would  not  be  any  use.  You  will  do  what  you 
want  to,  anyway."  At  the  end  of  the  procedure 
the  judge  asked  him,  "Have  you  anything  to 
say?  "  He  said,  "  Yes,  I  have  one  thing  to  say. 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  171 

Judge,  I  did  not  say  on  the  street,  '  To  hell  with 
the  court ! ?  The  police  testimony  was  all  there 
was  and  the  policeman  lied,  but,"  he  said,  "  before 
you  sentence  me  I  want  to  stand  up  and  say  here 
before  the  press,  To  hell  with  such  a  court ! " 

Now  the  peril  of  that  goes  far.  That  spells 
menace  for  the  future,  and  it  is  not,  I  repeat,  the 
case  of  individual  judges  or  individual  courts,  it 
is  the  case  of  the  status  of  property  as  compared 
with  life  and  labour  before  the  court.  It  is  the 
proposition  that  a  great  part  of  our  law  has  been 
written  to  protect  the  property  of  the  strong,  who 
got  it  by  force  originally,  whose  only  original 
title  was  that  of  force,  and  who  have  been  strong 
enough  to  write  the  law  to  protect  that  property. 
That  is  why  the  ex-chancellor  of  England,  one  of 
the  best  legal  minds  in  the  world,  said  a  thing 
which  sounds  most  extreme  to  Europe.  He  said, 
"  If  I  had  my  way  I  would  hang  all  those  respon- 
sible for  the  robbery  of  the  property  of  other 
nations  in  the  present  war."  He  does  not  say 
a  word  about  what  he  would  do  for  those  respon- 
sible for  taking  the  millions  of  lives  in  this 
present  war.  It  is  your  fundamental  proposi- 
tion there  that  has  to  be  changed. 

Now  that  status  is  going  to  be  changed  by  one 
method  or  another,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the 
world  is  now  coming  to  believe  in  a  different 
philosophy  of  life.  It  has  been  believing  that 


172  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

property  was  worth  more  than  human  rights,  but 
it  is  learning  now  that  humanity  must  ever  stand 
supreme  above  property.  It  is  coming  to  a 
philosophy  of  human  values  and  human  rights 
that  was  not  taught  by  those  who  dress  in  purple 
and  live  in  kings7  houses,  not  by  those  who  court 
the  favours  of  emperors  and  have  the  privileges 
of  the  rich,  but  the  philosophy  that  was  taught 
by  one  who  worked  with  His  hands.  And  the 
world  that  is  coming  to  believe  in  that  philosophy 
is  going  to  change  its  law  and  its  custom  until 
the  battle  between  the  man  and  the  dollar  is  won 
in  favour  of  the  man.  The  law  which  is  more 
tender  to  property  interest  than  to  human  rights 
is  a  reflection  of  an  aristocratic  state,  a  state  of 
class  privilege.  It  is  a  reflection,  moreover,  of 
the  militaristic  mind  of  that  state  which  holds 
the  great  common  crowd  of  folk  subordinate  to 
the  group  of  luxury.  But  now  we  are  creating  a 
different  kind  of  state,  a  state  that  never  will 
enthrone  a  superior  class  in  comfort  and  luxury 
with  an  inferior  class  at  the  bottom,  a  state  that 
is  organising  its  whole  force  and  its  whole  life 
for  the  development  of  all  its  people  on  terms  of 
equal  opportunity.  In  such  a  state  law  will  have 
this  for  its  supreme  function  —  it  will  be  the  ex- 
pression of  the  will  of  the  people  to  restrain  those 
who  would  injure  or  destroy  the  vital  property  of 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  173 

the  state  —  the  lives  and  welfare  of  the  people 
who  make  the  state  and  all  its  property,  and 
without  whom  neither  the  state  nor  property  has 
any  meaning  or  existence. 


174  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 


Q.  Is  not  highly  paid  labour  wages  taken  from 
the  unskilled  and  unorganised  labourer? 

A.  Only  in  part.  It  comes  from  a  number  of 
other  sources,  too. 

Q.  Does  not  the  recall  of  judges  and  the  recall 
of  decisions  follow  logically  from  your  statement 
of  to-day? 

A.  It  does.  In  a  democracy  the*  supreme 
power  must  always  be  the  will  of  the  people. 

Q.  Does  not  the  hope  of  labour's  future  depend 
upon  the  fact  that  they  are  developing  a  litera- 
ture of  their  own? 

A.  It  does  very  largely.  The  fact  that  labour 
is  learning  to  think  indicates  that  it  is  gaining 
capacity  for  action,  but  labour's  literature  must 
not  be  isolated  from  the  currents  of  the  world's 
intellectual  life. 

Q.  Does  not,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  police 
power  of  the  State  rest  upon  the  working  man 
inasmuch  as  it  is  the  power  of  the  people? 

A.  The  police  power  of  the  State  is,  of  course, 
the  power  of  the  majority,  and  if  the  working 
man  is  the  majority,  that  is  his  power. 

Q.  If  a  workingman  is  called  to  serve  upon  a 
jury,  should  not  he  look  at  the  case  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  working  class  alone? 

A.  That  is  just  the  kind  of  dose  you  have  been 
getting  from  the  capitalist,  and  it  won't  do  you 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  175 

any  good  to  turn  that  dose  around.  Look  at 
everything  from  the  standpoint  of  the  widest 
social  interest. 

Q.  The  Constitution  is  a  class  document,  and 
being  a  class  document  must  it  not  be  necessarily 
thrown  overboard  so  far  as  economic  law  is  con- 
cerned? 

A.  The  Constitution  was  to  a  certain  extent  a 
class  document,  and  it  becomes  more  and  more  so 
as  class  distinctions  deepen,  and  so  far  as  what 
shall  be  done  with  it  is  concerned,  I  think  the 
world  will  not  stop  because  we  tear  a  parchment 
more  or  less. 

'Q.  Do  you  still  advise  us  to  obey  the  law,  or 
are  we  to  join  with  the  man  who  said,  "  To  hell 
with  the  law"? 

A.  It  is  a  very  different  thing  to  take  a  gen- 
eral attitude  toward  all  law  and  all  courts  and  to 
refuse  to  obey  an  unjust  court  and  an  unjust  law. 
I  would  never  advise  any  man  to  obey  any  law  or 
any  court  which  he  believed  to  be  unjust. 

Q.  Is  it  not  true  that  if  you  have  recall  of 
judges  it  will  be  the  recall  of  the  majority,  and 
that  there  is  danger  in  the  fact  that  sometimes 
majorities  are  in  the  wrong? 

A.  We  are  always  in  danger  as  long  as  we  are 
alive.  The  danger  of  the  majority  is  offset  in 
this  way,  that  the  minority  can  always  become  a 
majority. 


176  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

Q.  Is  it  not  true  that  in  labour  cases  Massa- 
chusetts decisions  are  superior  in  many  ways  to 
those  of  many  other  States? 

A.  I  am  not  a  lawyer  and  cannot  speak  with 
authority.  However,  I  believe  that  the  laws  and 
the  courts  of  Massachusetts  have  been,  on  the 
whole,  more  fair  to  labour  than  those  of  any  other 
State. 

Q.  Is  it  not  true  that  many  of  the  justices  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts  rose  from 
the  labour  class? 

A.  Of  that  fact  I  have  no  knowledge,  but  in 
determining  the  sympathies  of  the  person,  that  is, 
determining  his  attitude  towards  a  class  ques- 
tion, it  is  a  matter  not  of  income  nor  birth  al- 
ways; it  is  a  matter  of  one's  psychological  and 
ethical  point  of  view  that  determines  the  thing. 

Q.  Has  the  Governor  of  this  State  or  any  other 
State  the  moral  right  to  summon  the  militia  to 
protect  property? 

A.  He  has  that  right. 

Q.  I  would  ask  the  lecturer  if  he  desired  to 
give  the  impression  that  he  was  opposed  to  giving 
such  a  prerogative  to  the  Governor  of  the  State 
of  Massachusetts? 

A.  I  am  opposed  in  a  democracy,  which  is  the 
only  kind  of  government  I  believe  in,  to  give  such 
an  authority  to  any  individual. 


LABOR  AND  THE  LAW  177 

Q.  To  whom  would  he  give  that  right  in  case 
of  absolute  necessity? 

A.  I  would  have  that  right  determined  by  a 
majority  of  the  community  where  the  conditions 
exist. 


VIII.     DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY 

THERE  are  plenty  of  people  who  think  there  is 
no  need  to  have  a  commission  to  discover  the 
causes  of  industrial  unrest.  They  are  quite  sure 
that  they  know  them.  There  are  some  folks  who 
take  refuge  in  the  comfortable  belief  that  indus- 
trial unrest  is  a  manufactured  product,  turned 
out  by  a  group  of  agitators.  Unfortunately  for 
that  theory,  industrial  unrest  appears  usually 
ahead  of  the  arrival  of  the  agitator.  The  so- 
called  agitator  is  really  an  effect  and  not  a  cause. 
Various  types  of  labour  organisations  may  con- 
tribute to  industrial  unrest,  but  they  themselves 
are  simply  evidences  and  expressions  of  it.  It 
is  a  thing  that  is  social  as  well  as  industrial. 
You  can  find  it  existing  in  China  and  in  Japan 
just  as  it  does  in  England  and  in  the  United 
States,  and  if  you  think  you  can  stop  it  by  sup- 
pressing the  agitators,  you  will  find  that  even 
though  you  could  smash  every  trade  union,  sweep 
the  Socialist  party  out  of  the  political  field  and 
consign  all  the  I.  W.  W.  speakers  to  darkest  dun- 
geons, your  industrial  unrest  would  still  persist 
with  the  same  degree  of  spirit  and  force  that  it 
now  persists. 

178 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  179 

There  are  some  other  folks  who  think  that  in- 
dustrial unrest  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  the 
struggle  of  the  group  that  is  deprived  of  this 
world's  goods  to  secure  more  comforts  and  some 
luxury.  They  believe,  therefore,  that  industrial 
unrest  can  be  assuaged  by  an  increase  of  wages 
or  an  improvement  of  working  conditions.  Now 
while,  of  course,  the  first  and  fundamental  de- 
mand of  labour  is  for  its  due  and  just  share  in 
the  material  gain  of  civilisation,  it  is  something 
more  than  that.  It  is  a  desire  for  self-expression. 
It  is  a  desire  to  share  not  simply  in  the  gains  of 
civilisation,  but  in  the  control  of  civilisation. 
You  can  satisfy  the  desire  for  material  gains  and 
you  will  not  by  so  doing  stop  industrial  unrest. 
For  what  you  are  facing  here  is  not  the  rumbling 
of  individual  stomachs  which  are  hungry.  It  is 
the  stirring  of  the  soul  of  the  race.  And  those 
who  have  been  dealing  so  long  with  columns  of 
figures  that  they  have  forgotten  what  the  soul  of 
man  is  like  had  better  take  heed  of  the  fact  that 
it  is  the  soul  of  man  and  not  his  stomach  that  is 
stirring  in  this  labour  movement. 

When  you  see  a  widespread  unrest  in  any 
period  of  human  history  instead  of  looking  for 
particular  causes  you  had  better  get  down  un- 
derneath the  surface  and  see  what  is  moving  there 
to  make  the  eruptions.  At  any  time  of  wide- 
spread social  unrest  in  human  history  you  will 


180  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

always  find  underneath  the  surface  the  stirring 
of  some  great  idea,  of  some  supreme  ideal  that  is 
coming  to  birth.  The  ideal  that  is  stirring  behind 
the  industrial  and  social  unrest  of  our  age  —  and 
you  cannot  determine  its  cause  adequately  by 
treating  it  merely  as  industrial  unrest  —  the 
ideal  that  is  stirring  down  there  is  the  ideal  of 
/democracy.  It  is  that  ideal  of  life  which  is  the 
great  contribution  to  history  of  that  little  and 
peculiar  people  that  used  to  live  in  that  little 
strip  of  land  that  runs  up  and  down  one  side  of 
the  Mediterranean  but  who  have  since  become 
citizens  of  the  world,  and  have  carried  that  idea 
and  that  ideal  to  the  utmost  corners  of  the  earth. 
It  is  the  idea  which  has  always  lain  unexpressed 
in  the  mind  of  men.  It  is  the  ideal  which  has  al- 
ways been  nurtured  down  at  the  bottom  of  the 
human  race  and  which  has  found  its  clearest  and 
its  loftiest  expression  in  the  mouth  of  the  Work- 
ing Man  of  Galilee.  For  what  is  stirring  here 
is  his  great  teaching  of  the  uttermost  worth  of 
the  downmost  man, —  the  truth  that  every  life 
must  count  as  one  and  no  life  must  count  as  more 
than  one.  But  that  fundamental  principle  of  the 
absolute  and  eternal  worth  of  every  individual 
personality  is  not  democracy.  If  that  be  all  you 
take  out  of  the  lips  of  the  Carpenter  in  order  to 
organise  around  it  your  political  and  industrial 
life,  you  have  nothing  whatever  but  individual- 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  181 

ism.     If  that  is  all  you  take,  it  will  lead  you,  of 
course,  into  philosophic  anarchism.     But  Jesus 
taught  that  the  uttermost  worth  of  that  down- 
most  man  could  only  be  realised  as  life  was  or- 
ganised in  brotherhood  for  that  purpose.     Here   . 
is  the  fundamental  principle  of  democracy,  that  \ 
life  must  be  organised  in  brotherhood  for  the  f 
purpose  of  realising  the  eternal  worth  that  be- 
longs to  every  individual  soul. 

That  principle  has  been  slowly  making  its  way 
in  human  history  and  it  has  been  destroying  all 
despotisms  —  despotisms  of  state  and  of  church. 
It  has  made  impossible  feudal  aristocracies  along 
with  despotic  empires.  It  is  making  impossible 
all  priestly  hierarchies  howsoever  organised  and 
in  whatsoever  terms  concealed.  Now  that  prin- 
ciple comes  to  make  its  way  in  the  industrial 
world.  That  principle  which  has  been  express- 
ing itself  so  vitally  and  powerfully  in  the  state 
and  in  religion  is  now  confronted  by. an  industrial 
system  that  is  organised  on  the  same  principle  as 
the  old  aristocratic,  despotic,  militaristic  state; 
namely,  the  principle  of  the  right  of  the  strong  to 
rule  and  to  use  the  weak  to  their  advantage. 
And  that  is  something  more  than  a  feudal  work- 
shop. It  means  not  simply  a  feudal  workshop 
but  an  autocratic  administration  and  organisa- 
tion of  finance.  It  means  that  your  whole  indus- 
trial system  from  the  labour  of  the  handworker 


182  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

to  the  control  of  the  common  capital  upon  which 
\  life  depends  is  in  despotic  hands.  Industry  is 
suffering  just  as  much  from  boss  rule  in  the  con- 
trol of  its  financial  system  as  it  is  from  the 
despotic  control  of  the  worker  in  the  workshop. 
What  you  have  here  is  the  absolute  enthrone- 
ment of  the  despotic  principle  in  industrial  life 
and  the  whole  stirring  of  industrial  unrest  is  the 
rebellion  of  the  democratic  spirit  against  that 
despotic  organisation  of  industry.  In  so  far  as 
it  is  the  expression  of  the  working  men  in  the 
labour  movement,  it  is  the  voice  of  their  determ- 

\  ination  to  be  captains  of  their  own  souls  and/ 
masters  of  their  own  fates.     It  is  the  expression 

Y  of  their  determination  that  no  other  man  or 
group  of  men  shall  control  or  limit  their  lives. 
They  have  found  themselves  to  count  in  the  pres- 
ent industrial  scheme  of  things  quite  often  as 
nothing  more  or  less  than  a  thing  that  is  bought 
and  sold  in  the  marketplace.  They  have  found 
themselves  counted  simply  as  a  number  on  a 
payroll,  or  reckoned  merely  as  an  item  in  a  cost 
sheet,  and  now  they  are  expressing  their  voice 
and  their  will  in  the  great  determination  that 
every  worker  shall  find  the  expression  of  his  per- 
sonality in  the  place  where  he  works.  Men  who 
have  come  to  take  place  and  part  in  the  common- 
wealth, who  have  come  to  feel  that  they  do  count 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  183 

as  one  in  the  life  of  the  state,  are  going  here- 
after to  count  as  one  in  the  industrial  world. 

INDUSTRIAL  DESPOTISM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 

Is  there  such  a  fact  as  industrial  despotism  in 
the  United  States?  Can  it  be  that  in  this  land 
of  freedom  and  liberty,  in  this  country  that  has 
not  simply  shouted  but  shrieked  democracy  in 
the  face  and  the  ears  of  all  the  world,  that  here 
despotism  still  lingers?  You  have  on  record  the 
determined  opposition  of  those  in  control  of  some 
of  our  greatest  industries  to  any  organisation  of 
labour  whatsoever,  and  if  that  be  not  the  funda- 
mental expression  of  the  despotic  principle,  what 
is  it?  You  have  in  the  steel  industry  the  record 
in  sworn  testimony  before  a  commission  that  men 
have  been  discharged  for  forming  any  kind  of 
organisation  lest  it  should  become  a  trade  union. 
You  have  the  record  of  men  discharged  for  going 
as  a  committee  to  ask  for  such  a  thing  as  relief 
from  seven  day  work.  You  have  the  record  be- 
fore the  Industrial  Commission  of  the  men  who 
control  the  coal  industry  of  Colorado  refusing 
even  the  principle  of  a  grievance  committee,  re- 
fusing even  that  elemental  expression  of  the 
democratic  principle,  asserting  in  the  face  of 
modern  democracy  the  absolute  prerogative  of 
despotic  ownership  and  despotic  control.  You 


184  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

have  your  whole  movement  of  the  National  Manu- 
facturers' Association,  with  its  promoters  pro- 
claiming their  intention  to  rescue  the  country 
from  bad  unions  and  bad  leadership  and  to  es- 
tablish the  fundamental  principle  of  liberty  in 
the  open  shop,  organising  time  after  time  a  closed 
shop  against  the  workers.  Then  you  have  a  good 
many  common  people  repeating  the  same  foolish 
cry,  that  the  principle  of  trade  unions  is  all  right 
but  the  trouble  is  that  it  has  such  bad  leadership. 
Now  I  want  to  ask  if  the  people  who  use  that 
logic  are  willing  to  apply  it  to  capitalism?  Be- 
cause what  is  sauce  for  the  goose  is  sauce  for  the 
gander,  and  if  the  whole  principle  of  trade  union- 
ism is  wrong  because  it  has  some  bad  men  for  its 
leaders  sometimes,  then  by  the  same  token  there 
is  plenty  of  evidence  to  prove  that  the  whole  sys- 
tem of  capitalism  is  wrong  for  the  same  rea- 
son. 

You  have  something  more  than  the  opposition 
to  labour  organisations  as  the  expression  of  the 
despotic  principle  in  industry.  You  have  the 
successful  attempt  to  control  the  whole  life  of  the 
worker,  to  control  his  whole  social  necessities. 
You  have  seen  established  private  baronies, 
feudal  baronies  within  the  state.  That  they  are 
sometimes  benevolent  baronies  does  not  for  the 
moment  affect  the  issue.  The  issue  is,  that  here 
you  have  the  expression  of  the  despotic  principle. 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  185 

As  one  old  Finnish  striker  put  it  out  in  Calumet 
last  year.  He  said : 

"  It  is  this  way.  I  work  for  the  company,  and 
my  wife  she  must  buy  at  the  company  store.  My 
kid  he  must  go  to  the  company  school,  and  my  girl 
if  she  want  a  book  she  must  go  the  company 
library.  If  I  want  me  a  bath  I  must  go  to  the 
company  bath  house,  and  if  my  kid  gets  sick  he 
must  go  to  the  company  doctor.  Now  I  go  on 
strike.  I  get  into  a  row.  The  company  sheriff 
arrests  me  and  they  put  me  in  the  company  jail. 
They  take  me  to  court  and  the  judge,  he  is  a 
pretty  good  fellow,  he  say  '  You  are  alright.  You 
can  go/  but  the  company  what  do  they  do?  They 
say, '  We  have  not  got  him  yet,  but  never  mind,  we 
fix  him,  we  get  his  damn  head  pretty  soon.'  Now 
I'm  getting  old.  Pretty  quick  I  die.  And  when 
I  die  I  want  to  go  to  heaven.  I  hope  so.  But  if 
the  company  own  heaven  I  want  to  go  to  hell 
right  quick.'' 

Out  in  Colorado  it  was  something  worse  than 
that.  It  was  not  simply  the  attempt  to  benevol- 
ently control  the  life  of  the  workers,  but  it  was 
the  actual  control  of  all  the  civil  and  legal  rights 
of  the  workers.  There  are  coal  camps  out  there 
where  the  very  road  into  the  camp,  the  very  high- 
way, is  the  property  of  the  coal  companies  and 
no  man  comes  and  goes  on  that  highway  except 
at  their  will ;  where  they  own  the  schoolhouse  and 


186  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

the  church,  the  store  and  the  saloon, —  every 
facility  for  the  life  of  the  worker ;  where  the  only 
civil  official  in  the  camp  is  the  paid  employe  of 
the  corporation  —  he  is  both  judge,  jury  and  exe- 
cutor—  and  where  anybody  who  does  not  meet 
with  their  approval  is  told  to  go  down  the  canyon, 
and  if  they  do  not  choose  to  go  down  the  canyon 
they  get  beaten  up  or  shot.  Now  that  is  all  on 
record,  in  sworn  testimony.  It  is  a  fact  that  we 
have  had  set  up  here  in  this  United  States  ab- 
solute despotic  control  of  industry.  What  is  the 
reason  that  this  despotic  principle  still  lingers 
in  the  industrial  world?  It  is  the  desperate  at- 
tempt of  some  to  cling  to  rights  and  privileges 
which  the  reason  and  conscience  of  mankind  have 
decided  do  not  belong  to  any  one  group  of  peo- 
ple, and  labour  in  resisting  such  despotism  is 
fighting  not  simply  its  own  battle  but  it  is  fight- 
ing the  battle  for  all  of  us.  It  is  fighting  the  bat- 
tle for  the  common  liberties  and  the  common  free- 
dom of  all  the  people.  For  the  attempt  to  retain 
despotic  control  and  absolute  prerogative  and 
privilege  goes  out  far  beyond  the  control  of  the 
terms  and  conditions  of  labour.  Those  who 
maintain  it  see  clearly  that  if  labour  pushes 
its  power  much  farther  in  the  way  of  securing  ma- 
terial gains,  it  conies  to  the  point  where  those 
material  gains  can  only  be  secured  at  the  cost  of 
some  diminution  of  profit.  It  is  the  clinging  to 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  1ST 

that  special  privilege,  the  despotic  right  of  one 
group  to  individually  determine  what  shall  be 
its  share  of  the  common  product  of  toil  that  is 
behind  this  repression  of  the  organisation  of  la- 
bour. If  the  greater  .attempt  to  extend  that  same 
despotic  control  over  the  common  interests  of 
life,  over  the  resources  upon  which  all  of  us  de- 
pend can  succeed  ( and  how  near  it  comes  to  being 
done  in  this  country  there  is  evidence  in  plenty), 
if  that  can  be  done,  the  group  that  can  do  it  in 
their  taxing  power  upon  the  common  wealth  of 
the  world,  in  their  indirect  control  of  the  life  and 
liberties  of  the  people,  have  a  power  undreamed  of 
by  the  empire  makers  of  the  past. 

The  necessity  is  upon  those  who  care  anything 
for  the  principle  of  democracy  to  see  clearly  that 
in  resisting  despotic  power  in  the  workshop,  la- 
bour is  fighting  a  battle  of  freedom  for  the  whole 
commonwealth.  And  if  some  of  you  think  that 
those  who  speak  and  write  on  these  questions  are 
inclined  to  unduly  favour  the  side  of  labour,  you 
must  remember  this,  that  we  are  speaking  im- 
personally,—  if  we  can.  We  are  speaking  as  Lin- 
coln spoke,  and  you  remember  his  words.  He 
said :  "  If  it  comes  to  a  question  between  capital 
and  labour,  labour  must  take  priority,  because  la- 
bour precedes  capital  and  there  is  no  capital  with- 
out it." 

Now  Lincoln  was  not  talking  in  personal  terms 


188  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

about  groups  of  capitalists  and  groups  of  labour- 
ers. He  was  talking  impersonally  about  two 
great  social  principles,  about  two  great  social 
forces,  and  the  only  sound  public  policy  by  which 
democracy  can  be  maintained  is  that  policy  that 
Lincoln  there  enunciated,  with  prophetic  insight 
at  that  time.  In  standing  upon  that  ground  we 
are  resisting  of  course  the  divine  rights  of  capi- 
tal, which  have  been  claimed,  for  despotism  al- 
ways claims  divine  rights.  And  it  needs  them, 
too.  "  Me  and  God  "  is  always  the  voice  of  the 
despot.  But  he  will  need  something  more  than 
that  before  he  can  make  headway  against  the 
worldwide  ground-swell  of  the  incoming  tide  of 
democracy,  whether  he  be  in  government  or  indus- 
try. The  divine  right  of  capital,  you  know,  has 
been  publicly  proclaimed  in  the  United  States. 
They  do  it  in  more  refined  language  in  these  days. 
They  have  learned  better.  But  it  was  publicly 
proclaimed.  We  were  told,  that  the  Almighty  in 
his  great  wisdom  had  selected  these  men  of  su- 
perior intelligence  and  superior  character  as  the 
guardians  of  the  destinies  of  the  rest.  Well,  if 
God  did  that  He  is  blinder  than  justice  is  usually 
painted.  The  capitalistic  mind  expresses  itself 
in  more  delicate  and  subtle  terms  these  days.  It 
does  not  offend  so  grossly  the  conscience  and  the 
reason  of  democracy,  and  let  me  say  that  not  all 
capitalists  have  the  capitalistic  mind  by  a  long 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  189 

way  and  not  all  industrial  managers  have  it. 
Somebody  raised  a  question  here  yesterday  as  to 
whether  some  of  the  judges  of  Massachusetts  had 
not  come  up  from  below.  From  my  experience 
of  industrial  managers  who  have  come  up  from 
below  some  of  the  hardest  and  most  brutal  oppres- 
sers  of  their  fellowmen  are  those  who  came  up 
from  the  bottom.  And  so  when  I  speak  of  the 
capitalistic  mind,  I  speak  again  impersonally. 
Its  full  fruitage  is  both  arrogant  and  blasphe- 
mous in  its  claims  of  superior  intelligence  and 
knowledge  and  of  its  special  privilege  of  alliance 
with  the  Almighty.  When  you  get  it  in  its  worst 
form  it  says  that  workers  are  beasts  of  a  different 
order,  and  it  says  the  teachers  and  the  preachers 
are  silly  dreamers  who  ought  to  be  pushed  out  of 
the  way  of  the  practical  men  who  know  how  the 
world  ought  to  be  run. 

Against  that  capitalistic  mind,  which  is  the 
stupidity  of  despotism,  the  world  must  and  will 
make  its  headway  into  the  land  of  reason  and 
justice  and  brotherhood.  What  are  the  results 
of  despotism  in  this  country,  industrially  speak- 
ing? What  are  the  fair  fruits  of  industrial  des- 
potism? Serfdom,  first  of  all.  The  weak  and 
the  dependent  fall  into  a  condition  of  servility. 
I  go  sometimes  to  industrial  plants  in  industrial 
communities  where  men  are  afraid  to  talk  be- 
cause the  shadow  of  fear  hangs  over  them.  And 


190  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

where  you  have  that  you  have  also  corruption. 
There  is  where  you  have  your  spies,  sometimes 
holding  office  in  labour  organisations,  and  where 
you  have  that  at  the  bottom,  clear  up  to  the  top 
you  can  find  the  poison  of  graft  and  corruption. 
Despotism  never  has  been  able  to  maintain  itself 
in  the  world  except  by  spies  and  corruptors. 
Then  among  the  strong  you  get  rebellion.  Among 
the  strong  you  get  the  only  answer  that  inde- 
pendent men  can  make  to  despotism  and  espion- 
age, and  of  course  you  get  the  spirit  of  revolu- 
tion. You  have  always  had  it  as  the  answer  to 
despotism  in  all  history,  and  if  you  want  the  real 
reason  for  such  an  outrage  as  the  McNamara  in- 
cident you  have  it  as  the  last  weapon  against  des- 
potism. And  if  you  want  the  fundamental  rea- 
son for  Colorado,  it  is  because  the  mine  owners  of 
Colorado  absolutely  denied  the  principle  of  de- 
mocracy. 

There  are  many  contributing  causes,  on  both 
sides,  to  the  labour  conflict,  but  the  fundamental 
cause  of  the  conflict  is  the  denial  of  one  of  the 
inherent  rights  of  mankind.  And  when  you  have 
that,  what  do  you  have?  You  do  not  have  simply 
the  hell  of  open  warfare,  but  you  have  the  hellish 
poison  of  hate  brewing  and  coursing  through  the 
veins  of  the  group  at  the  bottom  until  you  have 
an  iron  wedge  driven  through  your  community 
life,  with  men  and  women  on  both  sides  of  it  who 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  191 

have  lost  reason  and  faith  and  fraternity  and  who 
face  each  other  with  hatred  and  suspicion.  How 
long  will  it  be  before  Belgium  forgets,  and  how 
long  will  it  be  before  the  workers  forget  Ludlow? 
Worse  than  all  the  brutal  outrage  of  the  conflict 
is  the  poison  of  hate  that  is  left  to  run  its  way 
through  generations  yet  to  come.  After  that 
reckoning,  you  get  on  the  other  side  inefficiency 
and  finally  degeneracy,  for  that  is  the  price  of 
despotism.  Those  who  wield  it  perish  by  it.  It 
destroys  them.  I  go  through  those  industries 
that  have  become  despotic  close  corporations,  and 
if  that  is  what  you  call  efficiency,  then  the  less 
we  have  of  it  the  better.  What  about  the  workers 
in  what  is  perhaps  the  most  despotically  organ- 
ised industry  in  this  country?  What  about  the 
large  group  of  workers  that  are  working  twelve 
hours  a  day,  and  what  about  the  social  result  of 
that  in  the  body  politic?  What  about  the  type 
of  life  that  you  find  in  those  twelve  hour  com- 
munities? You  will  find  that  it  is  losing  a  large 
part  of  its  productive  efficiency.  Because  of  the 
fact  that  it  blocks  the  avenue  of  approach  from 
the  bottom,  it  is  making  a  dead  level  at  the  top 
and  you  are  getting  a  mediocrity  of  management. 
Along  with  that  you  have  the  fact  of  friction  in 
the  industrial  world  because  you  have  it  split  and 
divided  there  with  suspicion  and  hatred.  You 
can  get  efficiency  out  of  despotism  in  a  militaris- 


THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 
# 

c  organisation  of  life,  but  in  a  democratic  coun- 
try with  a  democratic  people  who  rebel  against 
despotic  autocracy  it  is  the  most  inefficient  type 
of  management  possible.  The  result  is  that  you 
get  from  such  inefficiency  in  management  corres- 
ponding inefficiency  in  life.  Will  you  take  that 
steel  industry  again,  will  you  read  the  history  of 
the  steel  families,  and  then  will  you  tell  me 
whether  that  type  of  industrial  management  has 
benefited  the  people  who  used  it?  There  is  an- 
other evil.  The  spirit  of  despotism  at  the  top 
breeds  an  answering  despotism  at  the  bottom. 
It  takes  the  kindly,  simple  democratic  spirit  of 
the  plain  humble  folk  at  the  bottom  and  trans- 
forms that  into  the  hellish  likeness  of  its  "  bet- 
ters." The  answer  to  the  despotic  claim  of  capi- 
tal, "  This  is  ours.  We  own  it  and  we  will  run 
it,"  is  the  despotic  answer  of  labour.  And  that 
is  the  worst  result  that  can  come  from  it,  for 
labour  wants  to  remember  that  it  cannot  find  the 
day  of  redemption  by  seeking  power  for  itself. 
It  is  its  own  worst  enemy  in  that  process.  The 
same  demoralising  and  degenerating  results 
which  have  followed  despotism  at  the  top  will 
follow  it  when  exercised  at  the  bottom,  and  if 
labour  would  save  its  own  soul  and  save  the  rest 
of  us  it  must  cling  at  any  cost  to  the  fundamental 
democratic  principle.  In  the  day  of  its  power  it 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  193 

must  organise  life  not  simply  for  the  working 
class  but  for  all  the  children  of  men. 

Mankind  will  have  democracy.  It  will  not  see 
the  fruits  that  it  has  gained  in  the  state  de- 
stroyed. It  will  not  see  the  industrial  despots 
control  the  state  for  their  own  ends,  and  religious 
freedom  destroyed  by  the  subtle  control  of  intel- 
lectual processes  by  the  militaristic  powers  of 
capital.  We  have  got  government  of  the  people 
and  for  the  people,  and  the  essential  industrial 
needs  of  the  people  shall  yet  be  controlled  by  the 
people  and  for  the  people. 

METHODS  OF  INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY 

The  methods  are  first  the  democratic  control  of 
the  local  workshop,  and  for  the  Best  form  of  that 
you  can  take  the  old  town  meeting  fashion  of 
absolute  publicity  of  everything  for  everybody 
concerned.  The  people  who  are  opposing  trade 
unions  have  laid  upon  them  the  responsibility  of 
offering  something  better,  and  until  they  do  their 
sincerity  is  naturally  in  question.  The  next  step 
after  the  democratic  control  of  the  workshop  is 
the  extension  of  that  principle  through  the  co- 
operative organisation  of  the  local  workshop. 
We  have  several  in  this  country  but  co-operation 
develops  slowly.  We  have  only  got  democracy 
in  the  government  after  a  long  and  slow  pro- 


194  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

cess  of  education.  The  school  house  open  and 
free  was  the  first  thing,  and  the  next  thing  was 
the  chance  to  gain  experience  through  expression 
of  political  powers.  And  we  shall  only  get  in- 
dustrial democracy  after  a  long  and  slow  process. 
The  first  step  will  be  through  the  actual  control 
of  workshops  by  the  workers.  The  more  all  the 
workers  continually  and  persistently  take  part 
in  it  the  better  is  its  contribution  towards  de- 
mocracy. The  development  of  democracy  in  in- 
dustry will  result  in  the  elective  control  of  in- 
dustry. It  is  not  going  to  be  possible  to  stop 
industrial  democracy  simply  with  joint  agree- 
ments between  two  armed  forces  facing  each 
other.  That  may  be  nothing  but  a  truce  between 
two  despotisms  from  which  the  rest  of  the  com- 
munity may  have  to  suffer,  such  as  a  possible 
truce  between  those  two  controlling  groups  in 
Colorado.  The  only  way  you  are  going  to  stop 
that  industrial  anarchy  out  there  ultimately  is  for 
the  people  to  take  hold  of  those  coal  mines  and 
operate  them  for  themselves.  We  are  going  to 
pass  through  a  period  of  state  socialism.  Every 
civilised  nation  is  tending  in  that  direction,  and 
experience  and  knowledge  and  co-operative  power 
is  growing  among  us.  When  the  nations  of  the 
world  come  into  the  full  consciousness  of  what 
can  be  done  collectively  in  destruction,  they  are 
going  to  do  the  same  thing  that  has  been  done  in 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  195 

war-time  over  in  Europe  for  the  construction  of 
a  sound  basis  for  everyday  life.  The  chief  func- 
tions of  the  state  now  are  repressive,  but  slowly 
and  surely  we  are  going  to  remove  the  things  that 
needed  pressure.  The  two  chief  costs  of  the  state 
to-day  are  war  and  crime,  militarism  and  degen- 
eracy. Both  of  those  are  socially  preventable 
and  mankind  is  beginning  to  resolve  that  they 
shall  be  prevented.  Then  you  will  have  no  need 
for  many  of  the  present  functions  of  the  state. 
The  state  is  going  to  consist  in  the  co-operative 
action  of  all  the  people  to  carry  on  the  necessary 
business  of  life  and  to  develop  the  cultural  aspects 
of  life.  That  is  going  to  be  the  type  of  state  in 
the  future. 

The  dream  of  the  later  Syndicalists  is  some- 
thing more  than  a  dream,  it  is  a  forecast  of  the 
process  of  social  evolution.  Absolute  industrial 
and  social  democracy  is  the  complete  summation 
both  of  the  ideals  of  the  race  and  the  social  prog- 
ress of  the  race.  And  if  this  appears  so  far  in 
the  future  that  it  seems  to  be  enveloped  in  the 
mist,  I  say  to  you  look  back  first  into  the  past 
and  see  how  far  we  have  travelled.  What  a  step 
is  there  between  our  present  power  of  collective 
action  in  the  modern  state  and  the  power  of  the 
nomadic  clan.  When  you  go  back  of  that  a  still 
further  step  how  far  is  it  back  to  when  the  cave 
man  slept  with  a  cudgel  at  his  side?  And  if  we 


196  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

have  gained  so  much  in  collective  power  how 
much  more  shall  we  not  gain  in  the  future?  How 
far  have  we  journeyed  since  Jesus  confronted 
Caesar  and  the  principle  of  democracy  took  final 
issue  with  the  principle  of  autocracy  —  and  in 
that  day,  mind  you,  the  family  as  well  as  the  state 
was  established  on  that  despotic  principle.  The 
road  that  we  have  to  go  to  reach  the  end  of  our 
dreams  is  shorter  than  the  road  that  mankind  has 
travelled.  And  what  is  more,  in  the  past  they 
plodded  their  weary  way  in  darkness,  but  to-day 
the  road  —  its  course  at  least  —  lies  plain  before 
us  and  the  tools  for  its  making  are  here  ready  to 
our  hand.  "O  ye  of  little  faith  and  dull  of 
heart !  "  The  men  who  are  making  the  world  of 
to-morrow  are  the  men  who,  both  in  the  ranks  of 
capital  and  of  labour,  are  seeking  for  the  demo- 
cratic method  in  industry.  They  are  the  path- 
makers.  They  are  the  trail-blazers.  Those  who 
put  their  feet  on  those  first  faint  trails  of  indus- 
trial democracy  are  helping  to  make  the  great 
highways  over  which  the  millions  of  the  future 
shall  walk  into  the  land  of  justice  and  righteous- 
ness, and  that  only  will  be  the  land  of  plenty. 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  197 


Q.  In  view  of  the  conditions  against  them,  can 
the  working  class  be  blamed  for  wasting  their 
lives  by  drink  and  foolish  living? 

A.  I  hold  it  to  be  not  only  the  duty  of  the 
workingman  and  woman  but  of  every  other  good 
citizen  of  the  Brotherhood  of  Man  that  they  shall 
make  their  lives  the  fittest  possible  lives  that  all 
their  energies  may  be  thrown  into  this  great 
struggle. 

Q.  You  have  based  your  addresses  on  the 
ethics  of  the  Carpenter,  do  the  preachers  who  are 
shouting  for  Billy  Sunday  base  their  position  on 
the  ethics  of  the  Carpenter? 

A.  Every  man  can  speak  only  for  himself,  and 
I  have  no  intention  of  passing  judgment  on  any 
other  man,  but  I  want  to  express  one  of  the  deep- 
est convictions  of  my  life,  that  the  only  effective 
way  to  get  the  great  working  class  of  this  coun- 
try to  personally  follow  the  Carpenter  is  to  fol- 
low him  in  the  fight  for  social  justice. 

Q.  Would  you  advise  the  support  of  the  So- 
cialist party  as  it  is  to-day  in  carrying  out  your 
ideals  as  set  forth  in  this  course  of  lectures? 

A.  I  have  seen  so  many  things  in  the  past 
about  the  alliance  between  church  and  state  and 
its  results  that  I  must  insist  that  that  is  a  ques- 
tion which  belongs  only  to  the  conscience  of 
every  individual  man. 


198  THE  LABOR  MOVEMENT 

Q.  Should  we  have  more  schools? 

A.  What  we  need  is  not  the  education  simply 
of  men's  minds,  what  we  need  is  the  education  of 
all  the  capacities  of  men  for  the  fullest  possible 
kind  of  life.  That  is  the  kind  of  education  we 
need. 

Q.  Does  the  American  working  man  lack  co- 
operation? Is  that  the  reason? 

A.  It  is,  because  owing  to  our  late  economic 
development  here  the  spirit  of  individualism 
lingers  stronger  here  than  it  does  in  Europe. 

Q.  I  would  ask  the  lecturer  if  during  this 
course  of  lectures  he  is  speaking  as  a  teacher  of 
ethics  or  as  a  socialist? 

A.  I  am  speaking  merely  as  a  teacher  of  ethics. 

Q.  Do  you  think  that  the  trade  unions  stand 
in  the  way  of  democracy? 

A.  There  are  some  aspects  of  the  union  that 
do  stand  in  the  way  of  democracy,  but  no  work- 
ing man  of  to-day  ought  to  forget  that  the  long 
battle  of  trade  unionism  for  industrial  democ- 
racy is  entitled  to  the  respect  of  every  working 
man  in  so  far  as  it  stands  for  democracy. 

Q.  After  all  the  unions  have  done  for  the  work- 
ers how  can  you  say  they  do  not  stand  for  de- 
mocracy? 

A.  The  speaker  misquoted  me.  I  said  there 
were  some  aspects  of  the  trade  union  that  were 


DEMOCRACY  AND  INDUSTRY  199 

opposed  to  democracy,  but  that  it  stood  funda- 
mentally for  the  principles  of  democracy. 

Q.  Do  you  not  think  you  have  overdrawn  the 
case  in  favour  of  the  worker  and  against  the 
capitalist? 

A.  My  answer  would  be  the  statement  that  I 
made  in  the  course  of  the  address,  that  I  was 
talking  not  in  personal  terms  but  in  impersonal 
terms.  Of  course,  in  the  individual  cases  there 
is  something  different  to  be  said  on  both  sides. 

Q.  Would  these  ethical  ideals  you  have  advo- 
cated be  obtained  more  quickly  by  an  internal 
revolution  of  the  individual  or  the  external  revo- 
lution against  industry? 

A.  Those  are  two  things  which  cannot  be  sep- 
arated. Society  is  an  organic  thing  and  indi- 
viduals are  organically  related  to  it. 

Q.  Do  you  think  that  there  would  be  a  de- 
crease of  violence  in  Boston  if  the  police  would 
take  away  guns  and  police  clubs  from  the  police? 

A.  If  the  policeman  realised  that  he  was  a 
social  servant  we  should  have  a  great  deal  less 
disturbance  on  our  streets. 

Q.  Would  it  not  be  possible  for  all  people  with 
the  democratic  idea  to  work  in  unison  without 
action  by  the  government? 

A.  When  the  people  get  together  they  are  the 
government. 


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